


the true kingkiller

by ORiley42



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - The Mummy Fusion, Bev doesn't die because I said so, Beverly and Will are bros, Body Horror, Death and undeath, First Kiss, First Time, Humor, M/M, Supernatural Elements, The Mummy AU, True love™, background science husbands, implicit murder wives, so like the show basically, this fic is a pendulum between almost crack and psychological horror
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-11
Updated: 2019-07-16
Packaged: 2020-06-26 16:04:02
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 7
Words: 41,306
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19771669
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ORiley42/pseuds/ORiley42
Summary: “It’s amazing, you look like a normal person, but actually you are the angel of death.”—When Harry Met SallyWill Graham, forensic archaeologist, doesn’t believe in ancient curses. Then he frees a mummy from its centuries-long imprisonment and has to re-evaluate that belief system.A comedy of horrors ensues, lives are lost, and love is found.





	1. a dark and doubtful presentiment

**Author's Note:**

> This story is very loosely based on the charmingly preposterous mythology of the Mummy movies (especially the Tom Cruise reboot, for which I have an inexplicable love), with a variety of Hannibal-esque liberties taken. This is also my first Hannibal fic and I’d just like to say a hearty hello to everyone in this delightful, welcoming, hilarious fandom! <3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> chapter title from [Plato’s Symposium, about soulmates](https://classicalwisdom.com/greek_books/the-symposium/3/)

_Outside a cold, dark cave in Lithuania…_

“Maybe we shouldn’t do this.”

Will glanced up at Beverly, an uncharacteristically grim expression creasing her face.

“Getting squeamish on me now, Katz?”

Concern sharpened into annoyance. “Screw you, Graham. I’m just saying…maybe don’t go stomping into the super freaky ancient tomb that all the locals say is mega-cursed, with nothing but a flashlight and your moderately good looks?”

Will frowned. “Moderately?”

Beverly socked him in the shoulder. “Yeah, that’s the part to concentrate on. I’m being serious, Will, I’ve got a bad feeling about this one.”

“I get a bad feeling about all of them,” Will said in reply, scratching his jaw. He’d been working for the Crawford team—specializing in forensic excavation and reconstruction of grave sites—for years now, and every job left him feeling sick and adrift in the endless river of murder and disease and terrible acts of god that was human history. He knew he should stop if he wanted to see the other side of forty, but he didn’t. This was his job, it was what he did. It was what he was good at.

“Then why don’t we forget this and pack it up to the nearest bar? I mean, beer,” Beverly held up one hand, palm up at about shoulder height, then sank her other hand to her waist and said, dryly, “cursed tomb.”

Will closed his eyes. “Beverly. Do you know how many times I’ve been told a site is cursed?”

“Many times,” Beverly sighed.

“Do you know how many times I’ve gone in anyway?”

“Every time.”

“Do you know how many times I’ve been cursed with ancient evil?”

“Well, it would only have to happen _once_.”

The corners of Will’s lips turned up in a reluctant grin. “Fair point. Nonetheless,” Will shifted his weight meaningfully towards the entrance to the tomb.

Beverly waved towards the craggy mouth of the ivy-laden cave, wind whistling ominously through it like the trapped screams of the damned. “Oh, please, after you.”

Will stepped into the cave without any further fanfare. The temperature dropped as the meager moonlight evaporated, raising the hair on the back of his neck. His boots crunched over sooty gravel and the eerie white of tiny avian skeletons. His flashlight bobbed along the path like a ghostly spotlight in the pitch dark, Beverly’s higher-watt lamp filling in the walls of the cave just enough to generate a sense of claustrophobic confinement.

“Remind me again why we’re here at night? Alone? Without help, or mechanized equipment?” Beverly asked, following Will from a few feet behind. She thought a moment longer and added, “Or snacks?”

“Jack and the rest just muck things up,” Will said, growing impatient now that he’d gotten his way, “You know how I work, you know I need to see the scene fresh.”

“Nothing. About this. Is fresh,” Beverly enunciated, flicking away the cobwebs that caught in her hair.

“You like getting your hands dirty as much as I do,” Will shot back at her.

“I prefer getting them dirty under the watchful eye of an excavation team and a 10-k light grid,” Beverly sighed, but she couldn’t deny that she understood the appeal. Toeing across the line of proper discovery, sticking one’s nose where it didn’t belong, it was why she was the go-to gal for lassoing their unit’s anti-social grave guru. Tonight, though, she wished she hadn’t gotten so buddy-buddy with Will, if it meant she wouldn’t be trudging through ankle deep water to get to a Lithuanian grave site only recently released from the realm of the mythical into the genuine by a chance encounter with some mining charges gone awry.

“You win this round, Graham,” she said, stepping carefully over a trail of mucky rocks, “But just so you know, if I see Nosferatu down here, I’m running for my life and leaving you behind.”

“You’d have to go at least five hundred miles south to find Dracula and his ilk,” Will said, absent-minded, “But I catch your meaning, and won’t hold it against you if you leave me to my doom.”

“As long as we’re on the same page.”

After a few more minutes of quiet, filled only with the sound of sucking mud and distant water rushing, the two arrived at the dimly-illuminated mine site. The miners had left behind signage indicating the safest entrance to the unearthed tomb, as well as numerous notices indicating how distinctly _un_ safe the whole area was. They’d also left some wreaths of garlic and a smattering of handmade wooden crosses.

Beverly pointed stoutly at the garlic and crosses. “I reiterate: vampires.”

Will didn’t bother with a rebuttal, partly because he knew Beverly was rational enough not to actually believe in vampires, and partly because he was just irrational enough to shiver at the possibility.

Before he could think too much about it, Will plunged forward into the dark, the atmosphere growing impossibly muggier, the shadows so thick he wanted to brush them away with his hands.

Beverly followed with a muttered curse, the clomp of her boots behind Will anchoring him in a darkness so viscous it seemed to absorb whatever light he could throw at it.

Something in the tone of the endless dark changed and they emerged into a vast chamber, their twin shocked intakes of breath echoing around the space. They stood at the point of a triangle, the walls splitting off around them then coming back together in a flat wall of stone. In the center of the room’s triangle lay another, smaller and built of sandy rock that flowed up to support a trio of statues guarding the edges of a chasm, about twenty feet wide. They edged closer, but neither the flashlight nor the lamp could reach more than a few dozen feet into the pit—this was the kind of hole where you didn’t see its depth but felt it.

Nothing about this place looked like they had expected. Will had encountered death rituals the world over, seen the grotesque and the divine, the two overlapping most of the time. Love and hate and fear scrawled across those places, but here, they existed in quantities and combinations unfamiliar even to his practiced senses.

“No burial mound,” Beverly noted, practical as always. She set down the lamp and pulled out a smaller flashlight from inside her jacket, using it to scout along the edges of the pit and up the side of the nearest statue. “That’s weird.”

Will hmmed. “Maybe it collapsed?” he offered, but it sounded weak even to him. That this pit was deliberately made couldn’t be clearer.

“Something’s not right here,” Beverly said aloud what they both were thinking. “Actually, a lot of things. The protective figures are facing inwards, not out. No offerings accompanying the dead to the next world,” she swung her flashlight along the smooth, flattened ring of earth surrounding the risen edges of the pit. “And…what the hell is that?”

They leaned over the border of the pit in sync, hands instinctively finding each other’s elbows to keep from falling in. Light glinted like liquid moonlight in the beam of the flashlight, flowing in a silvery molten circle just below the mouth of the pit.

“Mercury,” Will realized, picking up a twig from the ground and dipping it in the shimmering liquid metal, holding it up for inspection. He realized the twig was in fact the ulnar bone of a bird’s wing. He didn’t drop it.

At this point, he’d usually have absorbed enough information to begin recreating the scene in his mind. Following the path of the buried and the buriers, tracing their history. Feeling their lives. Usually, he closed his eyes to wipe clear the disturbances of humans and history between him and the object of his thought. But in a darkness this complete, closing his eyes would be redundant at best, and standing this close to an endless pit, foolhardy at worst. 

His eyes were open, he was sure of that, when he saw it. Like a whisper across a lake, a sound in the shape of images. A flash of green foliage, freshly disturbed dirt, the silhouette of a man.

A crown of antlers.

Will spotted them at the far end of the cave, heading the opposite point of the triangle, held reverently throughout time in the stone hands of a guardian statue.

He set off towards them, leaving Beverly behind in his single-minded ambition.

They were a glistening, almost iridescent black. They shouldn’t have even been visible in the dim light, but Will couldn’t see anything else, the inky tines seeming to catch at the edges of his vision and drag his eyes back to their nest.

Beverly shouted after him, “Will, unless your entire IQ evaporated when we entered this damn cave, then you know as well as I do that this isn’t a tomb.”

“It’s not,” Will agreed, coming to a halt in front of the antlers. His eyes followed the path of ebony bone to the base and then straight down. In the eternal darkness, he could’ve sworn he saw the shape of a man encased in stone. “It’s a prison.”

“What the hell were these people trying to lock up?”

“You just said it,” Will replied softly, understanding clicking into place, “they were trying to hold back hell.”

“Will. We are leaving. Now.” Beverly’s tone brooked no room for disobedience, but Will wasn’t listening to her, transfixed by the antler’s unearthly gleam. They almost seemed to move, like they were made of water merely choosing to hold the shape of bone on a whim.

Will reached out, until nothing more than a few atoms separated his fingers from the base of the antlers. He murmured to himself, a thoughtless prayer, “But when it comes to hell, I’ve always preferred to raise it.” He closed his hands around the bone. It was warm to the touch, and smoother than he could imagine.

A great cracking noise sounded deep within the earth and then, whispered in Will’s ear, came a reply, “When it comes to hell, I’ve always felt the same.”

Will spun around, trying to locate the voice, but only succeeding in losing his footing and ending up sprawled on his ass.

“Will!” Beverly called, alarmed. She took off towards him, ducking when a splatter of sand and rock flew from the chasm.

Another shuddering crack rose up from the pit and when Will looked down, he found the set of antlers come alive in his hands, writhing like snakes as they wrapped around his arms.

His scream was trapped in his throat as the snakes coiled into his skin, living tattoos of black fire searing into his flesh.

Beverly’s hands clamped down around Will’s outstretched arms and he shouted, “Don’t!” for fear the snakes would turn on her to consume next. But then the snakes were gone with a last red-hot hiss, dissolving into his flesh, and all he saw was Beverly’s worried face glowing in the dark.

“What happened?” she asked, dragging him to his feet. His legs felt like lead, and he worried for a moment that their monstrous weight would drag him into the ground.

“I just, I picked them up,” Will said, still staring at his forearms, “I picked them up and...” The antlers were gone. The hands of the statue were closed, like they’d never held anything at all.

“We have to get out of here,” Beverly said, clear and calm despite the fear in her eyes. “This place could come down around our ears.”

Will didn’t reply, he just let Beverly yank him forward, momentum carrying him towards the exit until his feet finally caught up and started moving him along.

He looked back, just once, at the pit. He didn’t see the pit. He saw greenery, and a blade, and a man with red eyes and a mouth like a wound. He was beautiful, and Will wanted to turn around and go back to him.

“What are you doing!?”

Will blinked, and Beverly had her arms thrown around his waist, hauling him down the winding tunnel away from the collapsing tomb as she shouted at him. He found himself trying to get away from her, return to the noise and the stone and the darkness.

“I don’t—” Will faltered but righted himself, stumbling after her towards their escape. Beverly kept a hand clamped on the arm of his jacket, eyes flicking periodically over to him like he might try and bolt again. Will couldn’t be sure he wouldn’t.

The walls of the cave wailed as stone turned to dust in the destruction. Great boulders began to crash down around their shoulders and Will finally started feeling the fear that had so far been markedly absent.

The erupted into the cool night air, pulverized stone chasing their feet as they slowed to a halt. Will turned back to the mouth of the cave, watching it cough up its ancient remains as it collapsed in on itself. It didn’t look particularly remarkable in the moonlight. Just a cave, in a quiet little town. But his heart was still trying to beat its way out of his chest, reminding him of how close death’s fingers had gotten—and not just because of the cave-in. Every time he blinked, he saw the man in the green forest painted on the inside of his eyelids, blood so red it was black dripping from his blade.

Will was distantly aware of Beverly saying something. He didn’t settle firmly back into reality until she started shaking his shoulders.

“Will? Will!”

“Huh? What, it’s—are you hurt?” he asked, sounding more confused that concerned. The idea that she might be injured buzzed like a fly outside his consciousness, irritating and paltry.

“I’m fine,” Beverly huffed. “Are you?”

“Yes,” Will replied, giving the word enough space so that it didn’t sound like a tinned response, which it was, or a lie, which it also was.

Beverly looked unconvinced, as Will knew she would be. She was smart. “Sure you don’t need a doctor or anything?” she asked, giving him another once over.

“Huh?” Will didn’t meet her eyes, only about twenty percent of his mind present for the conversation. “Oh, no, I’m fine.”

“Alright. Then I need a goddamn beer.”

Beverly dragged him to the nearest bar, one of four Will had counted so far. It was always good to be aware of the location of the nearest alcohol.

The slightly grungy establishment was loosely populated with locals, old men mostly, retired from the town profession due to creaky knees and aching spines that wouldn’t allow for their back-breaking labor to continue. They visibly conspired among their number when Will and Beverly stormed in and made a beeline for the bar, before sending over a man with a white beard and a glint in his eyes.

“Hello,” he said in lightly accented English. “You two look like you’ve seen some trouble?”

“You could say that,” Beverly replied, saving Will from having to.

“Looks like you might have been, uh, poking around in the caves?” the man continued with a pointed glance at their dusty clothes, plumbing for information. Beverly looked like she was going to not-so-politely brush him off, but Will beat her to the punch. He’d be happy to give the man whatever gossip he desired, if it meant Will could learn something himself.

“You know about the caves?” Will asked, turning on his stool.

“Ha, do I…” the man took this as an invitation, settling onto the stool next to Will and holding out a hand. “Darius,” he proclaimed with a wide smile. His upper right canine glinted gold.

Will shook the proffered hand, begrudging the contact. “Will,” he replied, before cutting to the chase. Brilliant green flickered behind his eyelids. A blade. “Any clue what the hell’s buried down there?”

“Ah, you have been looking at what my friends dug up, no?”

Will nodded.

“There are many stories about that place.” Darius wagged two fingers at the bartender and a beer materialized in his hand. His eyes glowed with the light of a storyteller in his element. “They say it holds a monster from the pit, but born of man. An evil so great, death could not hold him, so he was imprisoned in metal and stone and earth. A terrible beast with a stag’s horns and black eyes.”

“Red eyes,” Will corrected automatically.

Darius rolled to a halt, mid-gesture. “Excuse me?”

“Sorry,” Will scrubbed a hand across his face, “Never mind. Go on.”

Darius seemed deflated, possibly more than that—a little afraid. “The beast was entombed centuries ago for his crimes against man, and God. He slew without remorse and feasted on the fruit of his violence.”

“A cannibal,” Will deduced. “Wonderful.”

Darius’ gaze was distinctly wary now. He held his beer to his chest, as if he feared Will’s aura may poison it. “Yes, a man who ate other men. And women, and children. His own children, even.”

“Yikes,” Beverly commented. “Good thing he’s _dead_ and a _myth_ ,” she said significantly. Will carefully avoided her gaze when she swiveled on her stool to glare at him.

Darius didn’t take his eyes off of Will. “To see such a creature walk the earth again would be a terrible fate for all humankind. And so, those who entombed him laid a curse on the key that would unleash him. They say that he who freed this monster would be doomed to forever join him in his living death.”

“Living death,” Will repeated, dully. “Never really got that idea. I mean, aren’t we all just meat waiting to rot? What makes the living dead so special.”

Darius didn’t reply. Will realized, not for the first time in his life, that he hadn’t sufficiently censored his inner thoughts before releasing them into the world.

“Well, it is getting late,” Darius said, unsteady as he rose, “I shall leave you two in peace.”

“Wait—” Will tried to say, thinking he should at least pay for the man’s beer, but he slipped away with a flinch and a shudder.

“Well. He thinks you’re cursed,” Beverly said bluntly, watching Darius return to his friends, quick-like.

“I did just disturb the final resting place of an evil so great, death couldn’t hold him,” Will quoted. “Not a bad assumption to make.”

Beverly tapped her fingernails on the wooden bar to get his attention. “You weren’t disturbing anything alone, I was right there next to you. And anyway, I thought you didn’t believe in curses.”

Will pursed his lips. “I don’t.”

“Uh huh.”

“I don’t,” he repeated, and he almost sounded like he believed it.

Will and Beverly finished their drinks in silence before paying up and heading out. A storm had gathered while they’d been inside the bar, a fierce wind threatening to knock them off their feet as soon as they stepped outside.

“So. That was weird, in there,” Beverly picked up their conversation where they’d left off. “Not the whole curse thing, that’s pretty routine for us. But the whole, Will-Graham-initiating-an-unnecessary-conversation-with-a-stranger thing.”

Will let out a noncommittal harrumph.

“You wanna tell me what’s up? What got you so spooked you risked unplanned social interaction? Because I know some little cave-in didn’t do it.”

Will remained silent.

“I’ll take that as a no,” Beverly sighed. “Well, if you ever feel like sharing and caring, you know where to find me.”

Will managed to dredge up something like the corpse of a smile at that. Beverly just sighed again and continued stomping along the gravel side-road that led to the small but homey bed and breakfast that served as the only form of hospitality available in a forty-mile radius.

Will followed, stepping carefully in her tracks, each of his boot-prints gently eclipsing the ones she’d left.

A subtle crunch from the woods to their right tore his eyes from the ground and into the unblinking black gaze of a small brown deer. There was another crunch. Will paused. Deer weren’t exactly a noisy sort. When they were on their own, that is, Will amended mentally, as his view widened to encompass the span of midnight-jade trees. Dozens of pairs of identical black eyes shone out from between the leaves, reflecting Will’s expression back at him—a mirrored fractal of curiosity and fear. 

A train whistle split the chill night air. Beverly’s head whipped around, ponytail swinging over her shoulder. The train was close, far closer than it should have been. The tracks were at least half a mile away, but the whistle sounded barely beyond the tree line.

The unholy herd of deer burst from between the branches, at least a hundred clattering hooves spitting up gravel as the animals stampeded towards them.

“What the _hell_ —!” Beverly shouted. Will agreed with the sentiment. Beverly tried to grab Will and make a run for it, but Will stood still, planted in the ground. He knew there was no point in running.

Beverly clutched at Will’s sleeve with one hand, lifting the other instinctively to protect her face as a wall of musky heat overtook them.

The deer flowed around them like soft brown waves topped with fluffy whitecaps. Their hides brushed Beverly where she was pressed against Will’s back, but not so much as a hair landed on Will. He couldn’t say he’d known that would happen, but he wasn’t surprised by it either.

He was, however, genuinely surprised when a flash of light caught the corner of his eye, and he turned to find that train they’d heard flying towards them at alarming speeds, apparently paying no mind to the fact that it had abandoned its rails many meters ago.

The behemoth of metal and sparking wheels hurtled towards them, and Will shoved Beverly into the last members of the fleeing herd, watching her slim form get swept away while the nose of the train grew impossibly large in his field of vision.

With a detached sense of interest, Will caught a glimpse of his legs being turned to pink, bony pulp, before his brain suffered the same fate.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This fic is all written, and will be updated daily until it's complete! So, see ya tomorrow for chapter two <3


	2. ‘cause I’ve got you, under my skin

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> chapter title from [ol’ Frankie Sinatra](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X3ltenlQkOk)

Will woke up slowly. Everything felt fuzzy, his vision, his legs, his mind—nothing was as solid as he preferred it to be. The surroundings, however, were familiar. The comfort of dull colors and his ancient, worn-thin blue cotton blanket. His home in Virginia.

But something was missing. It took him a moment of cataloguing before he could put a name to the absence—the snuffling of his dogs. The tiny scratch of claws in their sleep, the occasional whine, a safe barrier of noise protecting him from the outside world. Even in the dim light—what was this, dusk? Dawn? Had he been asleep?—he could tell that there was no life in this house other than him. Maybe not even him, he realized, with a dulled sense of worry. He pushed himself upright on an elbow that didn’t feel entirely real, gravity shifting and slipping over his body as he tried to set the world to rights.

“I wouldn’t rise, just yet,” a voice said, rich and syrupy from the shadows. It hung in the air after the soundwaves dissipated, tiny cracks echoing through the memory of it even as a new onslaught began, “I’m afraid humpty and dumpty haven’t quite put you back together again.”

Will glanced down at his unresponsive body. As soon as he did, he fervently wished he hadn’t. A dozen shiny blue beetles the size of a man’s fist crawled along his stomach, down his legs, circling his ankles. Not that there was a lot of ankle to circle—although his upper body seemed to be largely in one piece, the same couldn’t be said for the rest of him. One of his intestines was trying to make a break for it, a pair of the beetles having to work as a team to convince it to return to his abdominal cavity. His legs were worse off, barely identifiable as legs at all, though the beetles seemed quite determined to change that. He watched with a distant fascination as they sewed together the muscles of his thigh, spitting out new skin over bloody, torn flesh. He decided to remain at his current comfortable mental distance, since moving any closer would surely resign him to permanent insanity.

Some pre-conscious instinct buried deep in his mammalian core struck out at the beetles, but they just nipped irritably at his hands while more of their kind swarmed up from under the covers to protect their brethren while they continued their work, undeterred.

“Pay them no mind, if they disturb you,” the voice said, a tidal wave caressing a cliff face, “though you needn’t be disturbed.”

“I think I’ll just go ahead and be disturbed anyway, if it’s all the same to you,” Will replied.

“The choice is, of course, yours.” The voice said with an audible smile, shadows shifting in the darkest corner of Will’s room. A figure melted forward, misshapen feet gliding soundlessly across the hardwood. Will forced his gaze upwards, over what seemed like miles of rotting bandages, yellowed bones and half-preserved flesh peeking out where the cloth had torn or disintegrated with time. A glint of light off the cheap brass lamp beside the figure leapt through a gap in its ribs. Its bones were littered with the gnaw marks of rats, and more of the beetles currently doing their due diligence on Will’s shattered body skittered around the creature’s shoulders and up its neck, occasionally ducking into the shallow of a shattered cheekbone and emerging at the top of its ill-wrapped skull.

It was hideous and enthralling in equal measure. Will couldn’t look away if he wanted to, and by god, did he want to.

The longer he stared, the more he saw beyond the empty eye sockets and time-browned teeth. Like an afterimage or a super-imposed projection, Will could see the man who’d been flickering in his mind since the cave. He was the most severe kind of handsome. Not young and smooth, but older and weathered, each line in his face a sign of the strength and skill it took to reach those years in a time so brutal. The ruthlessness required to survive, and the hunger it took to thrive.

But the word “man” seemed disingenuous and too small besides, in trying to describe the creature. No, “creature” wasn’t the right word, either, too generic, hardly better than “monster.” “Mummy” was a bit more specific, but even considering the term gave Will a deeply inappropriate case of the giggles. This wasn’t some childish trick-or-treater wrapped in toilet paper, or Hollywood’s elaborately costumed idea of a risen nightmare.

Finally, Will decided he might as well stop blundering about in his head and just ask, “Uh…what the fuck are you?”

The man—mummy? Demon? Hallucination?–seemed displeased, the way one might be when a waiter brings you a Caesar salad instead of the tomato bisque you ordered. “Rude,” he said, the lone word ringing like a warning in the aching silence.

“Oh, sorry,” Will said caustically, “Would you prefer: _who_ the fuck are you?”

Hannibal tilted his head minutely. “Better. Though that’s not a simple question.”

“I’ll take a simple answer, though.”

This elicited something that might have been the gruesome, undead cousin of a chuckle. “Very well. Before I was entombed, I was called Hannibal. I suspect that will do just as well now.”

Hannibal. Will let the name roll around in his mind for a minute, finding that it stuck to the insides of his skull, viscous and clinging, wrapping up divergent trains of thought in onyx spiderwebs.

“You were buried in that pit,” Will stated more than asked, since it seemed rather obvious. Hannibal inclined his head in confirmation.

“The stories say—or, well, at least one old guy in a bar says—that you’re some sort of hellbeast.”

“I like to consider myself as possessing a higher station than any sort of beast.”

“You like to consider yourself the god of death,” Will replied, the answer coming off his tongue before it even settled fully in his mind.

“That may be what I’ve become, after the rituals my contemporaries performed took their toll.” Hannibal picked idly at one of the grey-yellow bandages peeling away from the palm of his hand. “I was certainly an emissary of death; I’m more than that now. I am death become flesh,” Hannibal smiled, “And you belong to me.”

Will chewed the inside of his cheek while he thought that over. “So…I’m dead?”

“Technically. But it needn’t be permanent.”

“Needn’t it?” Will echoed vaguely, thinking of brain tumors and CAT scans. He wondered if a good MRI would locate Hannibal somewhere in his frontal lobe.

“No, but we don’t have to fret over those details now. We have other, more important matters to discuss.”

“Is that so,” Will said, as dryly as he could manage when dread was nibbling away at his fast-fraying hold on reality. “Y’know, your grasp of English is pretty good for a seven-hundred-year-old Lithuanian ghost.”

“I am not, by any standard definition, a ghost. And my grasp of English is as good as yours. Naturally,” Hannibal said, as if that was a clarifying or sensible response in any way.

“Naturally,” Will repeated again, agitation increasing in leaps and bounds. “Well, if you understand English so well, then understand this: please, just leave me alone. Go back to your coffin or whatever—"

“Coffin? Please, Will, do think before you speak. I am not a vampire, either.”

“No, you’re a mummy,” Will laughed, on the wrong side of hysterical, “I do apologize. Mummies live—or die?—in, uh, a sarcophagus! Right, that’s the word. Now that we’ve straightened that out, could you please go back to your _sarcophagus_ and leave me alone.”

“I don’t wish to return from whence I came,” Hannibal replied, mild but firm.

“Why not? Doesn’t seem like a bad setup to me. Cool, quiet, dark. No one bothering you. I wouldn’t mind settling down in nice, peaceful sarcophagus myself.”

“I do not wish to see you interred either, Will.”

Hannibal moved towards him and the room seemed to shrink drastically, the rotten tips of his fingers glancing over the comforter draped on Will’s half re-built knee.

“No!” Will jolted back violently, “Don’t. Don’t touch me—don’t come any closer.”

Hannibal paused, empty sockets boring into Will’s eyes, before taking a step back and folding his hands behind his back. Will could see them, bony strands intertwined, through a gaping hole in Hannibal’s abdomen, edges wriggling with maggots.

Will remained frozen, huddled near the headboard as Hannibal watched him. After about a minute, Will began to relax by splintered fractions. Hannibal didn’t seem in any hurry to speak, or move, or do much of anything. He was downright calm for a mummy, or an undead god, or a trauma-induced hallucination, or whatever the hell he was.

“A few centuries buried underground…” Will wondered out loud, “I think that would’ve left me rather impatient.”

“On the contrary…” Something moved in Hannibal’s face and Will got the impression of a smile, though he didn’t imagine a casual passerby could discern anything of the sort from the stringy flesh arranged along those yellowed teeth. “My time in the underworld has granted me stores of patience that are, if not infinite, quite respectable nonetheless.”

“Don’t suppose that patience would last you, say, another forty years or so? Long enough for me to make my natural way to a grave of my own design.”

Another rictus of a smile. “You suppose correctly.”

“Do I get any say in the matter?”

Something softened in the grisly remains that clung to the mummy’s eye-sockets as he replied, in a tone that was gentle, in the same way a sandstorm is gentle as it wears away at stone, “Of course, Will. You have all the say in the world.”

The pincers of a beetle clacked like thunder, and Will woke up.

He was trapped. Cocooned in some sort of thick, semi-opaque material that reeked of chemicals. He struggled desperately against the enclosure, but the press of his elbows and knees only stretched the industrial-grade plastic sheeting tighter across his face, precluding escape and oxygen. He had a horrible, prophetic memory of the warnings on dry-cleaning bags—keep away from children! Risk of suffocation!

His clawing hands finally caught on the back end of a zipper and he dug a nail into the seam, dragging the mechanism down until the thick plastic folds parted and he could breathe in great gasps of cold, antiseptic air.

He shoved the frosted plastic away from his bare skin, climbing out of what he tried not to realize was a body bag, tossing his legs over the side of what he really didn’t want to believe was an examination table in a morgue. A toe tag fluttering merrily on his right foot, announcing his name and time of death, mocked him.

“I’m alive,” he said out loud, shivering and jumping at the sound of his voice. “I’m alive!” he repeated, louder, partly to convince himself and partly to see if there was anyone else around to give him a second opinion on the matter. There wasn’t, unless you counted one of the other body bag occupants circling the room, and Will suspected they wouldn’t be very chatty. He scooted off the table, toes curling on the icy tile as he stumbled towards the center of the room, trying to find a way out from among the dead.

“Ei, Karolina!” A round, balding man called over his shoulder as he swung open the door to the morgue, “Ar turi—” Whatever he’d intended to say to his colleague rattled off into a shocked gasp as he turned to find Will standing in the middle of the room, shivering and wearing nothing but that damned toe tag. 

The man said something that Will imagined was either a prayer or a curse and dropped the tray of instruments he was carrying in a tremendous clatter.

A woman came skittering around the corner at the noise, Karolina, Will presumed. She spotted Will more quickly than her colleague had and uttered something similar, though Will thought he heard an appeal to Jesus in there this time.

“What the hell’s going on down there?” a third party called in English from the hall. Will had never been so relieved to hear Beverly’s voice, even as hoarse and upset as it was.

“Uh, hi,” Will said as soon as Beverly rounded the corner. “Could you, uh—oh, no…” The male attendant, whose nametag read “Tomas,” burst into tears at the same time as Beverly dove down to pick up a scalpel from the pile of fallen implements and then brandish it in Will’s direction.

“Whoa!” Will held up his hands, “Could you please just explain to me what the hell—” Karolina attempted to comfort the distraught Tomas, crossing herself as she patted his back. Will flinched at a particularly loud wail, trying to continue, “—is going on? I don’t remember what…there was a train? I thought I was back home in the US, but…”

Images of Hannibal when he was a man and how he was now as something more or less than that battled in his brain and Will fought to force them aside, to stay in the present. “There was…I saw…what _happened_?”

“You were dead,” Beverly said, harsh and cold. “Like, really dead. They said they weren’t even sure they found all the pieces of you under the metal and all the fucking deer carcasses and—you were _dead_.”

“I believe you but…” Will trailed off and shrugged, because really, there was no protocol for this. “Here I am.”

“You…are here. _All_ here.” Beverly said significantly, hand holding the scalpel drifting downwards as her gaze traveled in the same direction on Will’s body.

Her wandering eyes provided a pointed reminder to Will that he was entirely naked. He threw his hands in front of his crotch to cover himself, sidling quickly behind a nearby table.

“Uh, could you get a guy some clothes?” he asked, going for a friendly smile and missing it by a lightyear.

Beverly went to find something for him to wear, while Karolina took a shaking Tomas outside to calm down. The women returned a couple minutes later, Karolina pushing a cart of medical equipment, Beverly right behind her with an armful of clothes.

Beverly chucked a pair of holey jeans and a sweatshirt with suspicious stains at Will’s head. He pulled the pants on, zipping them up hastily even though they were a good bit tighter than he’d have preferred.

He looked between Beverly and Karolina, who were watching him with furious and fascinated stares, respectively.

“Could I have some privacy?” he asked.

“No,” Beverly answered shortly.

“Alright.” Will dragged the sweatshirt over his head. “Uh…these clothes…no one died in them, right?”

Beverly shrugged. Karolina leaned over and asked her in gently accented English, “Where did you find those?” Beverly answered and Karolina’s eyes went wide. She turned back to Will with a pained smile and he sighed. Perfect.

Karolina took this opportunity to duck forward, brandishing a stethoscope. Will flinched but let her get on with the whole let’s-check-he’s-not-dead-and-be-sure-this-time procedure.

“He was really dead, right?” Beverly asked the doctor, currently squinting down at the blood pressure cuff she was affixing to Will’s arm.

“Well, I didn’t actually see the body—that is, uh, you?” Karolina winced up at Will, “The emergency responders already had you bagged up when you arrived here.”

Will shuddered. Maybe even more than the cave-in, the train, the deer, and the fucking mummy, he predicted that his little suffocation adventure would be featuring prominently in his nightmare cycle.

“But they’re experts, right? They checked for a pulse?” Beverly pressed.

“They were volunteers, actually,” Karolina explained, “We don’t get much aside from the occasional mining or car accident, so we were short-staffed when the, uh, reports started coming in.”

“Still feel like even a volunteer should be able to tell the difference between a mutilated corpse and a basically fine living dude. He is actually fine, right?” Beverly asked, glaring over Karolina’s shoulder at Will like he might have misplaced a limb when she wasn’t looking.

“I’m fine,” Will answered in Karolina’s stead, annoyance at people being in his space quickly rising to a breaking point.

Beverly scowled at him, “You don’t get to say you’re fine, you were dead!”

“I’m not dead!” Will shouted back, more shrill than he’d have liked. “Sorry,” he amended quickly, raising an apologetic hand to a startled Karolina, “It’s just—I’m not. Dead. And that’s kind of a, a sensitive point for me.”

Beverly shuffled her feet. “Alright. Fair. Sorry.”

Will nodded his acceptance. Karolina continued her work in focused silence, Will flexing his fingers along the edge of the examination table and pressing his heels against the cool metal, surreptitiously checking for himself that all his bits and pieces were present and accounted for.

A digital beep bounced into the silence and Beverly retrieved her phone from her pocket, checking the notification. “According to my phone’s questionably translated Lithuanian, the government’s declaring a state of emergency.”

Karolina nodded gravely. “Last I heard, they’re flying in a crew from the capital to help us with the damage. We’ve got bodies all over town. Some met with the train, though they weren’t as lucky as you,” she tapped Will’s knee, “Some got caught up in these strange animal migrations, trampled and bitten. A few are…they’re…well,” her face grew even more pinched, “Let’s just say we don’t know what the hell could turn living people into… _that_ , so quickly. We’re considering quarantine.” She set the last of her diagnostic tools back on the cart. “It’s practically biblical.”

Will frowned at the choice of words. “You think God did this?”

“I think there’s no one else to blame.” She took a step away before saying to Will, almost like an afterthought, “You’re in good health. Perhaps a little sleep deprived, but otherwise hale and hearty. Well, compared to my usual patients.” She grinned a little, and Will barked a laugh.

“A low bar, but I’ll take it.”

“Thank you,” Beverly said as Karolina left the room with a distracted wave, saying she’d better go deal with the piles of dead folks and let the living be.

Will stared pensively at the lumpy, plastic-covered corpse directly in his line of vision. Part of him was morbidly curious what horrors lay beneath its veil. The rest of him had sense enough to know he really didn’t want to see what had been done to that unfortunate individual. What Hannibal had done. Because unless Will was going crazy (and that was still a strong possibility) he knew exactly who’d done this, and it wasn’t God. Well, Will snorted at the thought, the guy thought he was _a_ god, so, maybe the guess wasn’t too far off.

“Now what’re you laughing at?” Beverly shoved his shoulder.

Will winced, exaggerated. “Gentle, please? I did just return from the dead, according to you.”

“If you think that makes you special, you’ve got another thing comin’.” Beverly smiled, wan and tired. “Let’s get the hell out of here,” she threw a thumb over her shoulder in the direction of the door. “The bed and breakfast survived the fucking plague of trains and forest creatures, so let’s go get some sleep.”

Sleep sounded appealing. Nightmares did not. Will decided to split the difference by nodding and following Beverly out, while making a silent pact with himself to just lay in bed and stare at the ceiling, safely conscious.

They returned to the inn with no further excitement, Beverly leading him wordlessly the long way around to avoid the carnage. Will could still see the dancing searchlights, however, and imagine in excruciating detail how the bodies of the deer and the people would look, artfully interspersed with iron and steel. A chopper whirred overhead, and Will watched its progress with abstract interest.

The owner of the B&B was nowhere to be seen as the pair clomped up the stairs, exhaustion in every step.

Beverly paused in front of her room, Will brushing past on the way to his.

“Well, let me know if you need anything,” she said.

“Mm,” Will replied, knowing he wouldn’t ask even if he did.

“Will?”

He turned around and found Beverly wrapping her arms around her own shoulders, face drawn. “You…you’re really sure you’re not dead, right?” she asked, voice small underneath her usual bravado.

Will took the question seriously. He glanced down, making a show of counting all his appendages, wiggling his fingers, pinching his arm to make sure he wasn’t dreaming. “Yep,” he finally replied, “as far as I can tell, anyway.”

A smile crept onto Beverly’s face. “Okay. Could I hug you?”

Will made a face at the suggestion and Beverly laughed despite herself. “Right. Take that as a no.”

“It’s the thought that counts,” Will said weakly.

Beverly shook her head fondly. “Y’know, it’s actually comforting. If you’d said yes, then I probably would’ve had to drag you out to get scanned for a brain tumor.”

Will rolled his eyes. “Goodnight, Katz.”

“Night, Graham,” she returned, cheer restored, “and for the record, I’m really freakin’ glad you’re not dead.”

They slipped into their respective rooms. Will closed the door and leaned back against it, closing his eyes and sinking into the cool silence.

“Hello, Will.”

Will’s eyes flew open and the only reason he didn’t jump with alarm was that he was just too fucking tired to be bothered.

He knew what he’d find even before he spotted the tall, gaunt figure laid comfortably out in a wingback chair nestled in the corner of the room. He stared for a moment in horror before shoving himself off the door, torn between rushing the intruder and attempting an escape.

He ultimately decided to do neither, pointing an accusing finger at Hannibal and saying rather nonsensically, “You told me you weren’t a ghost.”

The folds of flesh, not present the last time Will had seen him, above Hannibal’s eye sockets lifted in an approximation of an eyebrow raise.

“So, what the hell are you doing haunting me?” Will clarified, crossing his arms over his chest.

“Do you feel haunted, Will?” Hannibal asked, as if he was genuinely curious.

“I feel a lot of things,” Will answered honestly. “One of those things is a deep, passionate desire to never see you again.”

Hannibal said nothing, but Will got the distinct feeling that he was pouting. Will didn’t care. He didn’t. He certainly wasn’t about to empathize with a—with this—oh, for fuck’s sake.

“It seems discourtesy is embedded in your genetic code,” Hannibal commented frostily.

“What, you want an apology?” Will shot back.

“Yes,” Hannibal replied neatly.

Will scoffed. “The day I apologize to a hallucination is the day I check into the loony bin.”

“Now I’m a hallucination?” Hannibal laid bony fingers across his chest in a parody of dismay. “I thought we’d gotten past this stage of misconception.”

“Well, if you’re not a hallucination, then how do you explain this?” Will waved a hand, encompassing himself and Hannibal and attempting to communicate with the simple gesture the enormity of weirdness that was Hannibal’s very existence.

Hannibal answered seriously and clearly, as if it was very important Will understand his words, “I am very much real, though not yet entirely extant in this plane of being. I am present in your mind and tangible to your body through the linking of our souls.”

“Oh.” Will blinked, processing. “That’s….huh.” The explanation was so bizarre, it almost looped back around into the realm of the believable. Now the question was: would Will prefer to believe that his soul was linked to that of an undead mummy, or that he was merely having a break with reality?

He was still pondering that conundrum when he felt a shift in the room, like the air was rearranging itself in deference.

“Hmm…” Hannibal’s voice sounded, barely a foot beyond Will’s left ear, “Modern fashion certainly leaves little to the imagination.” Will spun around to find Hannibal inspecting him, particularly, inspecting the way his shitty dead-guy jeans molded to his hips and ass like a second skin.

“Hey!” Will grabbed a newspaper from where he’d discarded it at the end of the bed, rolled it up and hit Hannibal over the head with it like a naughty pet. The shocked look on Hannibal’s face comically resembled that of Will’s dog Buster when he received the same treatment. “I don’t need to be ogled by a fucking walking corpse. Not today. Not after I woke up in a _morgue_.”

“That you woke up at all was by courtesy of my own machinations,” Hannibal replied, testy as he stepped carefully out of the range of Will’s newspaper (Will suspected he feared the indignity of the punishment more than any physical discomfort).

“Well, thank-fucking-you,” Will threw his hands in the air before collapsing backwards onto his bed, rolling over and burying his face in the nearest pillow.

There was a pause, then the rustle of fabric, and the bed shifted slightly. Pine and spruce dashed through with copper wafted over him. Will didn’t know why the hell a mummy smelled so nice, rather than like rotting flesh and ancient dirt, but he wasn’t about to complain.

“You’re welcome,” Hannibal said softly, and Will wondered how crazy he was going that he thought he sensed fondness in that tone.

The fact that he could feel something akin to body heat coming off of Hannibal, that the springs in the ancient mattress groaned under his weight as he inched closer to Will, meant nothing. Will had had some pretty damned realistic hallucinations in his time, and if he was ever bound for a relapse, then hours after he was nearly crushed to death by a runaway train seemed appropriate. The problem was, Will couldn’t quite bring himself to fully categorize Hannibal as a hallucination. In some bizarre way it seemed…disrespectful.

“Will?” A knock sounded on the door, followed by the click of the latch and Beverly’s concerned face peeking around the frame. “You ok in here? I thought I heard you talking to someone…”

Will raised his head, pondering for a minute how to respond. He chewed his lip as he screwed up his courage and then asked quietly, “Can you see him?”

“See who?” Beverly asked cautiously, glancing around the room.

“Shit,” Will muttered, scrubbing a hand over his eyes. Disrespectful or no, if Beverly couldn’t see Hannibal, then “hallucination” was the likely winner in the what-the-fuck-is-this lottery.

“Uh oh…” Beverly stepped inside, shutting the door behind her, “Will. Look at me.”

Will looked at her chin. Close enough.

“Are you seeing things again?” she asked, a touch of accusation mixed with sympathy.

“Again?” Hannibal repeated, interested, from where he was still lounging next to Will. His eyes flickered back and forth for a moment, like he was skimming through a card catalog searching for a topic. Will wondered if that’s what his memories looked like to Hannibal – his whole life as a series of yellowing notecards with moth-eaten borders, each meaningful moment scribbled in tight, cramped handwriting that threatened to run over the edge of the paper.

“Ah,” Hannibal apparently located the relevant set of recollections. “Yes. The man in the unmarked grave. A ‘simple dig gone very, very wrong,’” he quoted Will’s boss, Jack Crawford. That’s what Jack had said to the folks in the ER when Will showed up with self-inflicted wounds from a pick-axe of all things, muttering about seeing a man crawl out of the earth, intent on murdering his own daughter. Weeks later, while Will recuperated from what turned out to be encephalitis, the rest of his team found the body of a teenage girl next to the original grave, with nicks in her vertebrae indicating wrongful death. No one ever talked about the eerie coincidence to Will’s face, lest they accidentally set off what had pushed him over the edge in the first place. But, no one ever looked at him quite the same afterward, either.

“I’m not feverish,” Will finally said to Beverly in the present, wanting very much to avoid a trip to the hospital. “I was over a hundred and five last time. And it’s not—he’s not—trying to make me do anything.”

Beverly’s frown only deepened. “Well, tell him I’ll kick his ass if he tries.”

Will looked between Hannibal and Beverly and felt a sudden clutch of fear. “I won’t let him do anything,” Will promised, looking more at the thing sharing his bed than at her.

“ _Let_ me?” Hannibal echoed, meeting his gaze.

“Uh, who is he?” Beverly asked, thankfully stopping Will from responding to his hallucination/mummy-soulmate. “Is it a different one than before?”

“Yeah,” Will said, mouth suddenly dry. “Very different. He’s, uh, he’s from here. The place we went.”

“Uh huh. Should I be worried about a zombie situation?” Beverly asked, trying to make light of things, as was her way.

Will mirrored her uncomfortable grin. “Uh, more like a…mummy attack.”

“A _mummy_?”

“God, please don’t say it like that,” Will wanted to drown himself in his pillow again. “It sounds even dumber than it does in my head.”

“I believe that, because ‘mummy’ sounds _super_ dumb, in all circumstances.”

“Fuck off,” Will grumbled, with little venom. “He’s also a cannibal,” he tacked on, as if that made the situation somehow more reasonable.

Beverly was laughing in earnest. “Well, now I’m really quaking in my boots.”

“You should be,” Hannibal contributed mildly. Will froze, watching carefully for any sign that Beverly might have heard that. Surely, she must have heard _that_.

But she was still grinning, like the idea of a cannibalistic mummy running around was a delightful joke, not an active threat to her life and the lives of everyone else in this godforsaken town.

“I, uh, I’m really tired,” Will said, hands clenching into fists with the effort of not putting himself between Hannibal’s curious, hungry gaze and Beverly’s innocent smile. Some part of him knew that if he moved, it would seal her fate. “I think I’ll just try and sleep. I’m sure I’ll be fine in the morning.”

“I hope so,” Beverly said, “But I’ll be here either way.”

Will gritted his teeth. He wished she wasn’t so loyal. “Thanks. Goodnight.”

“Goodnight.” Beverly gave him one last diagnostic look, masked by a jaunty wave, before leaving. The door shut behind her with a snap.

Hannibal watched her exit carefully, and Will watched Hannibal.

“You don’t want me to consume her,” Hannibal said, apropos of nothing except Will’s newest nightmare.

“No, Hannibal, I don’t,” Will said firmly, willing his hands to stop shaking, “I really, really don’t want you to eat my friend.”

Hannibal considered this. “Would you prefer to eat her yourself?”

“No! Jesus.”

“It won’t be too terribly long, in the grand scheme of things, before she is—what’s that quaint expression I spotted in your mind?—ah, yes, ‘worm food.’ Why allow the annelids first crack at her flesh, instead of a more suited connoisseur?”

“God,” Will flopped onto his stomach, screwing his eyes shut and praying for a lightning strike or some other act of god to save him from having to match wits with a fucking mummy. “I’m too tired to deal with this philosophizing bullshit.”

“Then rest,” Hannibal decreed. “I’ll watch over you.”

Will snorted a derogatory laugh. “That’s kind of what I’m worried about.”

There was no warning before Hannibal’s skeletal fingers landed on Will’s back, smoothing down his spine. Will hunched his shoulders instinctively at the touch but couldn’t deny the relaxation of muscle and sinew that followed in Hannibal’s gentle path.

“Why would I wish to hurt you when you’re not even awake to enjoy it?” Hannibal whispered in Will’s ear.

Will dragged a pillow over his head, muffling a loud swear. But he could still hear Hannibal’s pleased laugh, and kindly spoken addendum, “And I assure you, even your worst nightmares know well enough to fear me.”

And then, despite his better judgement, Will did sleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hope y'all enjoyed meeting mummy!Hannibal properly...more to come tomorrow!!


	3. you are (not) precisely my cup of tea

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> chapter title's a paraphrase from ["getting to know you"](https://genius.com/Richard-rodgers-getting-to-know-you-lyrics)

“Ugh.” The first thing Will saw upon waking was a pair of cloudy grey eyes staring back at him. He immediately shut his eyes again. “You’re still here.”

“One might gather from your tone that that doesn’t please you.”

“One might gather that, yeah.” Will cracked one eye open to inspect Hannibal’s. “Those are new,” he commented. “The, uh, eyeballs.”

“Yes. I think they’re coming back rather nicely.”

Will squinted more closely at Hannibal’s visage, slightly less grotesque than before. The flesh is no longer stringy, and there are far fewer gaps in the skin, fewer exposed bones. The bandages have receded from his features and hands, and the beginnings of lips and nails are scrabbling their way into existence.

Will briefly considered asking how this metamorphosis was achieved but decided against it because A) he didn’t care, B) the answer would probably be gross, and C) there was still a strong chance he was hallucinating all this, in which case he should keep the conversations with a figment of his own imagination to a minimum.

He rolled out of bed with a groan and attempted to go about his usual morning routine as if there wasn’t a mummy stalking behind him at every move. This very quickly hit a roadblock when he headed to the bathroom and felt Hannibal right on his heels.

“Are you going to leave me alone?” he asked without turning around.

“No.”

“Fuck,” Will muttered, already resigned.

He brushed his teeth, glaring at Hannibal in the mirror all the while. Hannibal seemed fascinated by the slowly dripping sink, and so Will took the opportunity to strip and jump in the shower while his unwelcome company was distracted.

He twisted the shower knob up as scalding as it could go, pleased when his skin started to prickle angry red at the extreme temperature and steam blossomed into life, filling the room. His initial, perfunctory cleaning ritual deepened as the dirt under his nails reminded him of all his body had gone through the previous night, the memories urging him to scrub harder. He wore the soap down to a sliver and washed his hair vigorously, as if with enough attention he could remove every last particle of dust it had collected in the course of yesterday’s nightmarish events.

The shower curtain was yanked abruptly back, and Will became extremely grateful for the fluffy loofa he’d discovered upon his arrival. Specifically, for the cover it provided when a mummy with no sense of decency or personal space decided to stick his head into the shower and look around unabashedly. 

“It is my understanding that persons making use of this miracle of modern engineering are not usually encased in its walls for so long – are you experiencing some sort of difficulty?” Hannibal stared steadily at Will, politely ignoring his yelp of alarm. 

“The only difficulty I’m experiencing is _you_ ,” Will hissed. “Could you just—could you _please_ give me some privacy?”

Hannibal smiled. “I knew there was some courtesy buried underneath the uncouth façade.” And he disappeared, like all Will had ever had to do was say “please.”

Will embarked upon a series of deep, steadying breaths. They helped hold back the tide of panic enough for him to wash away the last of the soap and wrench the water off.

He peered cautiously out into the bathroom, half expecting to see Hannibal licking his toothbrush or something equally invasive and bizarre. But the man was nowhere to be seen, so Will hurriedly toweled off and, realizing he may not have the privacy to do so in peace later, took a piss. He dragged on the sweatpants he’d had the good sense to bring in with him and then frowned at the door. He did not, unfortunately, have anything else to wear, so he squared his shoulders and drummed up the courage to face what waited for him in his bedroom.

He threw open the door and found…nothing. He took another step. No Hannibal lurking beyond the bed, or in the chair. He could be hiding in the closet, Will supposed, but that seemed a little beneath him.

Will let out a long breath, slouching with relief as he went to retrieve a shirt. Flicking through his suitcase, he wondered if perhaps he’d earned some sort of reprieve with the shower scare. He unearthed a faded orange T-shirt and held it up for inspection.

“That’s not really your color,” commented a voice behind him.

Will leapt about a foot in the air, dropping the shirt. “Jesus _fucking_ Christ!”

“This Jesus fellow,” Hannibal said with a sigh, picking up Will’s abandoned newspaper and perusing its half-finished Sudoku, “So many of your modern cultures fixate on him, quite beyond what is called for. And at the expense of any other gods.”

Will glared at Hannibal, lounging in the chair he had most definitely not been in just a moment earlier. “Other gods? Like you, I suppose?”

“I’m not truly a god. Not yet. But we could be.” Hannibal picked up a pen and scratched in the last few numbers of the puzzle that had eluded Will.

“Y’know, I’m about sick of your cryptic bullshit,” Will snapped.

“Then I shall endeavor to be more opaque.” Hannibal reached behind his back and unearthed a long, glimmering dagger. Light danced along its wicked curve, and a blood red jewel glowed in the handle.

“Uh…” Will tried to back away without looking too obviously like he was backing away, “If this is opaque, then maybe cryptic is just fine…”

“You needn’t worry, dear Will,” Hannibal assured him, moving closer in a blink. He was suddenly near enough to share Will’s every breath, though Will had hardly seen him stand. Damn him.

“I don’t want to hurt you,” Hannibal said, so soft, Will wouldn’t have been able to hear him if he wasn’t practically whispering in his ear.

“Then what do you need a very large knife for,” Will asked, rather sensibly, he thought.

“It’s ceremonial,” Hannibal explained, holding the knife delicately out across his palm, “The jewel draws energy and the blade directs it, providing a conduit between this world and the next. When plunged into the heart of the chosen, the worthy, it endows he who experiences its kiss with power over the passage between life and death.”

Will looked at Hannibal, then at the dagger, then back at Hannibal. 

“What I’m getting out of this is: you want to stab me.”

“Yes.”

“With that,” Will pointed to the blade.

“Yes.”

“You want to kill me,” Will stated, enunciating each word carefully to ensure there was no miscommunication. 

Hannibal replied, almost huffy, “You would only die in a literal sense.”

“What other sense is there!” Will shouted. “Also,” he added upon reflection, “it would be kind of fucking redundant, since you _just_ went to all the trouble of bringing me back to life.”

Hannibal stepped even closer, the blade threatening to brush against Will’s exposed skin. “That death was not intended for you. This one is tailor-made.” His voice was seductive, and Will wondered not for the first time where the hell his body’s natural disgust reaction to something as obviously grotesque and unnatural as Hannibal had run off to. Now was not the time for his common sense or self-preservation to take a vacation. And certainly not the time for his libido to make an interested appearance, what the ever-loving _fuck_.

“And afterwards, when you’re reborn in my image, you could experience the world in ways you can scarcely imagine. You could do everything you’ve ever wanted to do in life and infinitely more. Time would be inconsequential. Flesh and pain your playthings. The earth your treasure to plunder. Would you like to go deep in the ground, without light, without food, until you can swim in the molten heat of our planet’s core? Would you like to traverse the floor of the ocean, where no sun has ever touched its depths? Explore the highest mountain summit, where even the oxygen cannot survive?”

Will rolled his eyes, affecting a moderately convincing air of nonchalance. “Why don’t you just offer me the moon, and be done with it?”

Hannibal paused and frowned. “I’ve never attempted to escape the atmosphere, so I cannot, in good conscience, promise you the moon. However, if it’s important to you, we can try.”

Will laughed. The sound surprised both of them. “I don’t—” he tried to explain, but another laugh bubbled up. Hannibal’s still-forming lips seemed dangerously close to pouting, and that just threatened to send Will into another hysterical bout of laughter. “I don’t actually want to go to the moon,” he finally said, “It’s just an expression. I’m basically trying to say you’re, well, you’re kinda full of shit.”

“I beg your pardon.” Hannibal’s eyes glowed, fierce and full of mortal promise. Will was unimpressed.

“You’re full of shit,” he repeated, “Maybe your lines worked on some prehistoric twink with a death fetish, but I’m a twenty-first century asshole with standards that include the guy offering me the metaphorical moon being alive, for one thing, and real, for another.

“So,” he added, defiant, “If you’re gonna stab me with your magic knife, then you should just get on with it, because I’ve got better things to do than have some imaginary bundle of rags talk my ear off with romantic bullshit about couple’s deep-sea diving or whatever the fuck it is you’re on about.”

Will finished with a huff, going to cross his arms but deciding against it halfway through, resulting in a rather ungainly shuffling motion that did nothing to cement his current attempt at projecting strength and confidence. Hannibal didn’t speak, his expression even more inscrutable that usual. Will analyzed his ensuing stony silence and finally realized, “You…can’t, can you? You can’t just kill me.” He rocked back on his heels, reassessing everything Hannibal had done so far. “Is that it? You need my permission? Do I have to sign off on you stabbing me to death?”

Hannibal opened his mouth, then shut it again. A trail of tiny insects crawled through the crack between his exposed mandible and cheekbone while he considered his words. Finally, he admitted, “It is less a requirement and more a preference. Eternity is a long time. I’d rather you join me of your own accord, and not carry resentment into our personal infinity.”

“Yeah, that sounds like a bummer,” Will agreed cheerfully. “Sucks for you, though, because ritual murder by ancient mystical dagger is a relationship deal-breaker for me.”

Will turned his back on Hannibal, triumphant. This was, it quickly became clear, a mistake.

“Just because I don’t wish to drag you kicking and screaming into my embrace, doesn’t mean I can’t reach you,” Hannibal growled. Will found himself slammed face-first against the sturdy oak of the antique four-poster bedframe, arms twisted behind his back.

Hannibal’s breath was hot against Will’s ear and _fuck_ , if this was a hallucination it had a hell of a good grip. It also had strangely familiar training in how to restrain a suspect. Oh, hell, Will recognized this hold. It was one of the ones Will had employed frequently during his tenure as a New Orleans cop, before he’d gotten stabbed and decided to refocus his life’s work on people who’d been safely dead for at least a century (thinking back on that particular life choice, he now sensed some sort of irony—or perhaps merely circularity).

“Let me go,” Will growled.

“Not just yet,” Hannibal said, cool and controlled. “I do not believe you have learnt your lesson.”

Will felt Hannibal’s nose brush along the curls that gathered at the nape of his neck. That was definitely not a part of the standard police holding position.

Then, Will thought, absurdly, that he should really get a haircut.

One of Hannibal’s beetle companions jumped ship to investigate Will’s hair and he shuddered, feeling its tiny feet dance across his scalp.

“You should go back to trying to romance me with the moon,” Will said through gritted teeth, “At least with that you had a fighting chance.”

“Am I ruining my chances now?”

“You better fucking believe it.”

“Hmm,” Hannibal’s lips brushed against Will’s throat, and he had to repress another shudder, this one for an entirely different reason. “If this is a romance, you’re not proving a very willing suitor.”

“No!” Will laughed, bitter and tinged with desperation, “I wonder why that is?”

“You haven’t given me a chance,” Hannibal purred. His mouth hovered over Will’s pulse point, like he was tasting the air around it in anticipation.

Will gave a heroic jerk in an attempt to free himself and Hannibal’s grip tightened automatically. The flesh of Will’s shoulder burned, like it was being rent asunder.

“Alright!” Will yelled, struggling ineffectually against the hold, “Point taken, you fucking psychopath!” 

“Rude,” Hannibal hissed, twisting Will’s arms roughly until he was nearly biting through his tongue to hold back a cry of pain. “Are you going to apologize?”

Yes! Will’s body screamed. “No,” he choked out.

Hannibal’s grip tightened until just a hair’s more pressure would result in broken bones, and then he released him without warning.

Will collapsed against the bed post, knees threatening to buckle. He winced and groaned, muscles from his wrists all the way through his back complaining loudly at the mistreatment.

“I don’t like…” Will had to pause mid-sentence to gather more air into his angry lungs, “being strong-armed.”

“Yes, I can see that. You are a…” Hannibal considered Will. “Stubborn son of a bitch,” he finally concluded, the sharp consonants of the last word seemed to taste sour on his tongue.

“That’s me to a T,” Will muttered, wiggling his fingers to try and get some feeling back in them.

“Your reticence is unexpected.”

“Really?” Will raised an eyebrow. “You think most people would happily jump off the deep end with you?”

“Not most. But you…your discovery of my tomb was preordained. If…” Hannibal aborted this most recent thought before it could form, giving a minute shake of his head. “You’ve given me much to consider, Will Graham. I’ve had an eon to think on my purpose. But now...”

“It’s not so clear?” Will guessed.

“On the contrary, I’ve never been more certain. It is the means to achieving it that have taken an unexpected route.” Hannibal reached out, lightly dragging the nails of his right hand across Will’s cheek. Will realized belatedly that the normal reaction to a monster’s caress should have been to flinch away, even to scream, but he didn’t feel the urge to do either. 

Instead, he just answered calmly, Hannibal’s lingering fingers brushing over his jaw as he spoke, “If I’m so unexpected, then why bother with me?”

Hannibal just smiled serenely at him, hand drifting to Will’s shoulder, thumb sweeping across his collarbone before traveling down his arm to settle at his wrist.

Will continued, trying to mimic confidence. “Maybe you’re wrong about me. Maybe I’m not part of your big plan.”

“Dear Will, you are most certainly an integral part of my ‘big plan’.” Hannibal’s smile grew. “You might say I…feel it in my bones.”

It took Will a minute, before the penny dropped and he rolled his eyes. “I can’t believe you’ve regressed to skeleton puns. I thought you’d have more class than that.”

Hannibal’s flat grey eyes twinkled. “Your friend is here,” he said.

A knocked sounded at the door, and Will turned at Beverly’s voice calling, “Up and at ‘em sunshine!” He spun back towards Hannibal but found an empty room.

Will swore under his breath. That disappearing act was getting very old, very fast.

He tried to shake off the shivers that clung to his spine, as well as the strange heat that lingered on his wrist where Hannibal had last touched him. He just barely remembered to pull the apparently not very flattering orange shirt over his head before answering the door.

“’M awake,” he said in greeting, since that was his all-purpose morning opener, and he didn’t see why he should deviate from that pattern now.

“And still alive,” Beverly agreed, “something I kinda wanted to see for myself. Now that that’s out of the way…” Beverly scrunched her nose in displeasure, “What hobo did you mug to get that shirt?”

“It’s not that bad…” Will protested weakly, but he was already turning around to retrieve a different one.

Beverly wolf-whistled when Will ripped off the evidently offensive shirt. He gave her the finger in response, before selecting a battered gray Henley and pulling it on with an air of finality.

“Acceptable?” he asked, doing a mock model spin.

“Now you look like a hobo with taste. So, an improvement.”

Will gave a long-suffering sigh and marched past her towards the stairs, trusting her to shut his door behind her. She did, then double-timed it to reach him before he hit the landing.

“Hey,” she reached out, not quite touching his arm in order to bring him to a halt. “This morning, I, uh, I heard shouting from your room.”

Will grumbled something incomprehensible.

“Nightmare?”

“Not exactly.”

Beverly pursed her lips. “Having a little domestic with your hallucination?”

Will flinched at the bullseye guess. “You could call it that.”

“Yeah?”

“He, uh, wants to stab me.”

Beverly froze, the pick-axe-and-encephalitis incident clearly at the forefront of her mind.

“Don’t worry,” Will assured her, “I think he wants my, uh, permission? To do it? And there’s no way he’s getting it.”

“That’s, er…good? I guess?”

“As good as it gets,” Will agreed, knuckling at his eyes until white spots broke out and danced across his vision.

“Let’s get some breakfast in you before we talk any more about stabby mummies,” Beverly suggested.

“Good call.”

Beverly led the way down the stairs to the B&B’s dining room. They said hello to the young woman organizing the modest breakfast buffet, and she gave them a small, frightened nod in response before escaping to the kitchen. 

Will’s eyes tracked the fleeing figure. “Guess word spreads fast.”

“Yeah, but word of what?” Beverly said under her breath, pouring a cup of coffee. “That we were in the caves? That we got almost run over by a train? That you may or may not be a dead man walking?”

Will shook his head, picking up a quarter-loaf of rye bread and turning it over in his hands as he thought. “I don’t know, but in any case, I think it’d be for the best if we left town, ASAP.”

“Now, I’m going to have to disagree with that.”

Will and Beverly turned around in sync to find a tall, slim man with short-cropped dark hair and a neatly pressed suit smiling at them. No, that was more of a smirk. Will sized him up with a quick brush of eyes up and down. On the young side. Urban. Law enforcement, probably federal. Working his way up the food chain, a chip on his shoulder and a lot to prove. Will tried not to groan out loud. He really didn’t want to be this guy’s promotion.

“Can we help you, Mister…?” Beverly trailed off, sounding polite. Will knew her well enough to recognize that as her ‘get fucked, asshole’ tone, and had to smother a smirk of his own.

“Agent,” the stranger corrected her. Will worked very hard not to reply, “Hello, Mister Agent,” because it probably wasn’t wise to antagonize foreign law enforcement professionals when one has recently escaped death under moderately suspicious circumstances, and is hallucinating/harboring an undead, murderous, cannibalistic mummy. “Agent Varnas. I was summoned to investigate the tragedy of last night, and the ensuring violence…and do you know what I keep running into around every corner?”

“That weird guy who keeps trying to sell us figs?’ Beverly offered. Agent Varnas looked taken aback, and this time Will couldn’t hold back a snort of laughter. “Seriously, we ran into that dude like three times yesterday. I think he must have some sort of secret tunnel system to move so fast.”

“No,” the agent tried to press on, though he was clearly ruffled, “You two. I kept being told that you two were at the center of the situation—you were spotted near the caves, which collapsed during the night, and were discovered by emergency personnel at the heart of the train crash…” Varnas trailed off to level a glare at Will, “One of you was apparently dead at the scene.”

“Clerical error,” Will offered the agent a grin an old colleague had once described as ‘low-grade spooky.’

Agent Varnas didn’t appear amused. “I suppose it must have been. Since, you are clearly not dead.”

“Well, appearances can be deceiving,” Will said cheerily, because poking this particular bear was proving quite entertaining.

“It is deception I aim to uncover,” Agent Varnas said, almost leaping forward with enthusiasm, “And I do not recommend attempting to hide anything from me.”

Upon closer inspection, Varnas’ youth was more apparent. Will almost felt bad. Had he ever been this fresh-faced, this eager? Probably, though he couldn’t recall it.

“I wouldn’t dream of it,” Will said, more sincerely. “Honestly, we’re pretty shaken up. We’d be happy to book a train back to Vilnius this afternoon, get out of your hair.”

“I’m sorry to say I’ll have to ask you to remain here while the investigation proceeds,” Varnas announced, not sounding sorry at all. “As primary witnesses, you may be called upon to testify.”

“We really didn’t see anything,” Beverly jumped in. “The cave started to get weird and shaky, so we left. Then there were a bunch of deer, then that fu— _freakin’_ train, then the whole Will not-being-dead thing, then…yeah. That’s pretty much it.”

“That’s it?” Agent Varnas repeated, mocking, “That is rather a lot.”

“We’d be happy to help, of course,” Will said, slipping into the uncomfortable mental PR suit that he only used in emergencies. The level of civility it required was almost lethal. “In any way we can. We’re sure you want to get to the bottom of this as quickly as possible, and make sure no more lives are endangered.”

Agent Varnas seemed thrown off his step, once again. Will gifted him with a careful sculpted expression of sympathetic neutrality.

“Very well,” Agent Varnas said after a slightly too-long pause. “You will both stay here, for the time being. I will contact you if I require further information, or if I…discover anything.” He scowled at both of them, and Beverly shot Will an ‘aw, isn’t he precious’ look as soon as the agent’s back was turned. Will half-expected him to pull dark sunglasses from his suit pocket as he left, but that was apparently one hard-ass G-man stereotype that Varnas was choosing to avoid.

“Awfully wet behind the ears,” Beverly remarked when the agent was out of earshot.

“Probably his boss doesn’t think a train derailment in the middle of nowhere was worth sending anyone senior,” Will replied.

“Yeah, but that wasn’t just some ordinary mechanical failure. That was some cinematic levels of fucked-up-ness. Seriously, Hans Zimmer should’ve done the soundtrack for that shit.”

Will snorted a laugh, and privately agreed that Hannibal definitely deserved some sort of sweeping orchestral accompaniment to his dramatics. “If that’s true, then Agent Varnas’ big brothers and sisters will probably be descending before too long.”

“And we’ve been invited to stay and watch the show,” Beverly sighed. “I can’t believe I let you convince me to fly out here.”

“Hey,” Will kicked her leg lightly under the table, “You were happy to come. All I had to say was ‘undisturbed 14th century Eastern European grave site,’ and you were booking our plane tickets.”

Beverly returned the kick with a smile. “Yeah, because you know how rare it is to find anything in Europe that someone hasn’t built a house on!”

Will nodded acquiescence. “Ancient and untouched.”

“Title of your autobiography,” Beverly grinned.

The smile that managed to dredge up from Will’s natural reticence wilted as he spotted a familiar figure investigating the dusty oil paintings lining the lobby walls. Hannibal turned on his heel as if he sensed Will’s attention, but only gave a twitch of his lips before wandering off towards the opposite corner of the dining room.

Beverly caught Will’s straying gaze and put two-and-two together. “Is your mummy friend here?”

“Yes. And he’s not my friend.”

“What’s he doing?”

Will checked. “Currently, he’s perusing the wine list and finding it lacking. Apparently, we should find a different establishment to patronize for lunch.”

“A discerning mummy. Huh,” Beverly squinted at Will, “Where did one of your hallucinations find opinions on wine in that crummy skull of yours?”

“That’s actually a good question,” Will frowned. There was another point in the ‘not-a-hallucination’ column. “My knowledge of wine could fit in a thimble.”

“Well, does he have any restaurant recs?” Beverly asked casually. She watched as Will tilted his head, then suppressed a rebellious smile.

“He, uh, he says he hasn’t been in the area for some time. So, no recommendations yet.”

“Right. Stuck in a hole for half a millennium. Makes sense.”

Will and Beverly finished their breakfast with a minimum of conversation on Will’s part, Beverly perfectly content to keep up a diverting stream-of-consciousness while Will kept a wary eye on Hannibal, who spent this time investigating the surrounding room and occasionally making disparaging comments about the quality of the décor.

“Earth to Will,” Beverly snapped her fingers and Will started.

“Sorry, what?” Will dragged his focus away from watching Hannibal pull threads out of the withering curtains.

“I was asking what you wanted to do, since we’re stuck here for the foreseeable future?”

“Oh, yeah. That’s a…good question.”

“Yeah. This place isn’t exactly a tourist hotspot.”

“We could…” Stay in our rooms, close our eyes, and pray for a swift and painless end, Will didn’t say. “…take a walk?”

Beverly snorted, but was ultimately amenable to the idea. They returned upstairs, gathering jackets to protect against the warning chill in the air, and set out to explore the town.

As it turned out, there wasn’t a great deal to explore, but they did their best. They walked along the woods for a while, but wordlessly decided it reminded them too much of the deer-disaster to continue for long. They rubber-necked at the increasing number of swarming law and medical professionals descending from all corners, but lost interest in this pursuit as well when they caught sight of a sickeningly gray, shriveled corpse being carted away.

Hannibal came and went as they journeyed, peering around tree trunks at odd intervals and then popping up next to Will without warning, matching each of his strides perfectly. As far as Will could tell, the laws of time and physics had no sway over Hannibal.

The three of them lunched at a café whose food turned out to be far superior than the décor, which could charitably be called ‘taxidermy chic.’ Well, strictly speaking, Will and Beverly ate lunch. Hannibal squinted curiously into the glass eyes of the animals mounted along the establishment’s walls, Will tried not to watch him do it, and Beverly tried to act like Will wasn’t twitching at odd moments and staring into empty space with looks cycling between irritated, perplexed, and strangely warm. 

Beverly excused herself to the bathroom a few minutes after Hannibal vanished with an inquisitive—and alarmingly puckish—look in his eye, focused intently on a middle-aged couple he’d spotted through a window, holding hands as they ambled down the road. This left Will alone with nothing but the café’s lone other patron, a man intimately and exclusively engaged with the bowl of soup in front of him, and Will’s own thoughts. This was not an ideal situation, considering his thoughts could be mistaken by passersby for the messy notes of a Stephen King novel, discarded for being more disturbed than any respectable publishing house would accept.

A slight wriggle came from Will’s breast pocket, and he was too confused to be immediately concerned. With only slight trepidation, he peered down and found the shiny blue-black face of a large beetle blinking up at him. Will stared at it, and it stared back. Will remembered the little bastard creeping off of Hannibal and onto him but had lost track of its position during the consequent rough housing. It appeared that the insect had made a home in his shirt, and Will found he wasn’t particularly distressed about this. In fact, he glanced down at his near-empty plate and, on a whim, picked up a few lingering breadcrumbs, dropping them into the pocket. The beetle descended on the crumbs with visible delight and Will found himself smiling too.

“Uh…whatcha doing there?”

Will didn’t glance up at Beverly’s hesitant tone, merely replying, “Feeding the rest of my lunch to a rather impressively sized coleoptera.” The beetle clicked happily up at him. Will wondered if Beverly would be able to see the insect or if it would be as invisible as Hannibal. He decided he’d rather not know. He also felt for some reason that the beetle should be named Stanley. He did not share that with Beverly either.

“Alright,” Beverly nodded, accepting. “You wanna get out of here?”

“Badly,” Will replied, referencing not just the café, but possibly the whole of Lithuania, or this plane of existence.

They ended up at the local library. The selection of English-language books was, unsurprisingly, limited, but enough to merit several hours of their time. Hannibal seemed thrilled by the endless walls of tomes. Will felt a little nauseous when he caught Hannibal eagerly perusing the well-stocked cookbook section.

A smattering of books in French caught Will’s attention and he glanced through them, a childhood in New Orleans giving him enough vocabulary to decode familiar titles. His fingers stuttered on the lightly worn red binding of the first book past the French section, its title etched in soft gold Italian that Will couldn’t translate, but he recognized the author well enough.

Well aware that perusing Dante while contemplating one’s own possibly hell-bound state was pretty on the nose, possibly even gauche, Will nonetheless tugged the book out from between its brethren and flipped through its opening pages. His thumb smoothed over a bent corner as he paused on a block of text whose shape telegraphed its poetic content, though Will couldn’t pick out more than a few romance-language cognates from the flow of words.

“Allegro mi sembrava Amor tenendo, meo core in mano…” Hannibal began to read over Will’s shoulder, the words tracing tantalizing patterns of breath over Will’s skin. Will slammed the book shut and slid away until a set of encyclopedias marked a safe space between himself and Hannibal.

“You speak Italian?” Will asked in an undertone, “Didn’t know they offered language-enrichment courses in the pit.”

“I do not speak it, per se, but I know it. All language is merely humanity’s irreverent and ecstatic attempt to make external that which is fundamentally internal, and so, all language is known to me.”

Will shook his head and laughed, “God, you really are so full of shit.”

Hannibal looked startled and offended in turn by this, which only made Will want to laugh more. He restrained himself, however, because he didn’t feel like being escorted out of the library for giggling hysterically at an invisible mummy’s oddly adorable expression.

Beverly’s curious face appeared around the edge of the aisle and she asked, “What’s so funny?”

“Nothing,” Will said, shoving the book back onto the shelf in the guiltiest way possible.

Beverly rolled her eyes and retrieved the book, frowning down at the author. “Huh. Didn’t think this guy was exactly a bucket of laughs. Also, I didn’t know you knew Italian.”

“I don’t,” Will sighed.

Beverly opened her mouth, shut it, and then opened it again to say, “Y’know what, I’m not gonna ask.”

“Good choice,” Will agreed, scooting past her with an ill-defined urge to find the nearest exit. The constant tremor of _escape escape escape_ had been chasing around his brain all day, to which his mentally shouted response of ‘where the hell would I escape _to_?’ had no effect.

“I was thinking we could go back to the morgue,” Beverly said, effectively halting Will in his tracks.

“You…what?”

“The morgue,” Beverly repeated, just a trace of apology in her tone. “I know it’s probably the last place you wanna go—”

“Uh, yeah—”

“—but I just got a call from Karolina, remember her?”

“How could I forget,” Will said, icy. He didn’t say that he could count on his fingers the number of people who’d seen him naked, and that an unfortunate quantity of them were involved in his post-resurrection incident.

“Well, I gave her my number before we left in case any more weird crap happened. And…” Beverly blew an errant strand of hair out of her face before plowing on, “Well, there’s apparently been a metric fuckton of weird crap, and she’d like to see you again.”

“Why me?” Will asked.

“Because you’re the only guy who’s ever left her place of work under his own power,” Beverly deadpanned.

“I wasn’t actually dead,” Will lied, “I don’t have anything useful to say to her.”

“I don’t think she’s interested in talking so much as maybe running some tests—”

Will was out the door almost before the last word left Beverly’s mouth, but she was fast and caught up to him before he could make it far.

“C’mon, it’s not like losing a little blood will kill you if getting hit by a train didn’t!” she argued, jogging at his side. “And what if there’s something valuable she could learn? Don’t you want to help these people? You’ve seen the same things I have today. Just because we’re not talking about the corpses doesn’t mean we’re not both thinking about them.”

Will had actually not been thinking about them, being more concerned with the living corpse-ghost currently walking sedately beside him. He slowed his pace, not because he liked the idea of being someone’s guinea pig, but because there was a chance that Karolina might be able to give them some inside knowledge of the investigation. That seemed useful, considering that Will’s number one suspect behind the supernatural carnage had just plucked a buzzing bee from a nearby bush and eaten it, before returning to Will’s side.

Will ground to a halt. “Alright,” he grumbled.

“Al—alright?” Beverly repeated, “Really? Kinda thought this was gonna be a whole drawn out fight.”

“Too tired,” Will replied, and that at least was honest.

“Okay. Let’s go then.”

Beverly wasted no time getting them to the morgue, which turned out to be housed in a squat concrete building half-hidden in a blue-green patch of spruce. Will hadn’t exactly been in a condition to take in his surroundings the last time he’d visited.

Karolina greeted them somberly, edging them past a row of sealed plastic body bags lying in only barely contained disarray, the gurneys pouring out of the spacious main work room. Will spotted a few flustered looking workers bustling around inside, but the building otherwise seemed fairly low on staff. Will wondered if local and federal law enforcement were too busy maintaining the health of the living to investigate the details of the dead.

Karolina answered the question that was apparently written on his face, frowning and saying, “The people from the capital, the people in charge, they’re using this place as a sort of…dumping ground, for lack of a more respectful word. They’ve set up their own base in the heart of town and they’re flying in experts to look at the more, um, strange cases.”

“Strange?” Beverly echoed, apprehensive, as they came to a smaller examination room.

“Extremely so.” Karolina made an abortive gesture towards the bodies they’d just passed, “The newer deceased…the ones who couldn’t have been involved in the train or the animal, uh, migration, they are…something….” Karolina shook her head and squeezed her eyes shut, “It’s like whatever it is that makes people alive was extracted from their flesh.”

Will sat down, hard, on the nearest horizontal surface. It turned out to be a desk, and his abrupt arrival on it sent pens scattering to the floor, but he didn’t notice. The reality of what he’d already known to be true had just slammed into him with the exact same force as the train from the night before.

In between blinks, Hannibal appeared, perched neatly beside Will. “You were thinking of me,” he said, pleased.

“I was thinking about how you’re almost certainly behind the spate of horrible deaths plaguing this town,” Will said without looking at Hannibal. Karolina and Beverly exchanged worried glances at Will’s announcement.

“Ah.” Hannibal clasped his hands in his lap.

“Yeah.” Will mirrored the gesture unconsciously.

“It is necessary.”

“It is not.”

“It is,” Hannibal repeated patiently, “though I would do it even if it weren’t.”

“You are…just…the _worst_.” Ok, so that wasn’t his strongest comeback. Sue him, he’d had a stressful day.

Karolina and Beverly were watching his conversation with an invisible partner with increasing concern, but hadn’t yet decided on whether or not to interrupt him. Or sedate him.

“But why?” Will finally asked, not bothering to keep the exhausted desperation out of his tone. “Why are you doing this?”

Hannibal tilted his head, in that slightly bird-like way of his. No, not bird-like, more predatory. Like a big cat watching some soft juicy mammal gambol in a stream, considering its prey with tender desire. “Why not?”

“Hey, Will…” Beverly had apparently reached her decision. “Who’re you talking to?”

Will adjusted his glasses and didn’t answer.

“Your mummy hallucination?” Beverly guessed.

“Mmm. He’s the one killing these people,” Will said, because it’s not like she was going to believe him anyway.

“Uh-huh,” Beverly nodded, not sympathetic, because she knew Will would hate her for that, but close to it. “Could you, um, tell him to stop?”

“I could. I don’t think he’s going to, though.”

“I am not,” Hannibal agreed, smiling at Beverly while she continued to look right through him.

“If you’re gonna run some tests, you should do it,” Will said to Karolina, managing to approximate meeting her eye. Her expression was clouded, and Will’s already above-average respect for her ratcheted up a notch when he saw the steel behind the unease. Good, he thought, this cursed town needs strong people if it’s going to survive this. Survive _him_.

Karolina nodded and made quick work of a basic battery of tests; blood, saliva, heartrate, she even took scrapings from under his fingernails. “Better safe than sorry,” Will agreed, and batted Hannibal away when he leaned down to lick at a stray drop of blood that had escaped from the cotton gauze pressed to the joint of Will’s arm.

They left in what felt like very little time, Karolina promising to call with any news, significant or no. Beverly and Will walked in silent agreement back to the B&B, neither of them in the mood to continue with their charade of tourism. Beverly’s phone chimed as they reached the inn’s driveway and she gestured for Will to trudge in while she took the call. He did so, collapsing on the lobby bench. He traced the pattern of the wood grain idly with his index finger, eyes catching on the creative pattern of steel-heads peeking out at the edge of the calico fabric cover. Not machine made, then, done the old-fashioned way. Will wondered where the B&B’s owners had gotten it, whether it had once been someone’s heartfelt gift, or simply a high-end product for those with the resources to afford originality. Had it been handed down from parent to child, or picked up in a rummage sale? What memories did it hold, reverberating in its molecules?

His strangely wistful wonderings were laid to rest by Beverly’s entrance. She whipped her jacket off in the rush of warm air, slipping her phone back in her pocket.

“Okay, I’ve got good news and bad news,” she declared, “Which do you want first?”

“The bad,” Will sighed, dragging one hand over his face, then bringing the other hand up to so he could maximize his blocking out of reality.

“That was Jack. He’s putting our favorite science dweebs on a plane first thing tomorrow. Thinks we need backup.”

Will made a sort of angry groaning noise, which Beverly correctly interpreted as, ‘Yeah, we probably do, but those guys aren’t exactly the fucking cavalry, and will likely manage to somehow get us into even more trouble with the local authorities.’ “What’s the good news?” Will asked from between his fingers.

“Uh…there isn’t any,” Beverly admitted, “But it would have sounded really terrible to just say, ‘I’ve got bad news and nothing else.’”

“Oh, yeah, dangling false hope in front of me and then ripping it away was definitely better,” Will said, waspish.

“I’m not very good at being nice,” Beverly shrugged, calm and unoffended.

“Yeah.” Will finally looked up from his hands, “It’s one of the reasons I like you.”

“That’s the spirit, Graham,” Beverly said, plopping down on the other side of the bench and giving him a companionable thump between the shoulder blades.

Will winced. “And that is why I _don’t_ like you.”

Beverly laughed and Will almost joined her, but when he glanced in her direction, he found Hannibal crouched beside her. He was so close, his rags looked like they were brushing her shoulder. Will watched, his stomach dropping out as Hannibal bared his teeth, perilously close to Beverly’s throat.

“I have to go,” Will almost shouted, standing abruptly.

Hannibal and Beverly looked up at him with twin expressions of surprise.

“Where?” Beverly asked, confused. Will couldn’t take his eyes off of Hannibal, who seemed momentarily distracted from feasting on the flesh of one of Will’s very small number of friends, but who could regain interest in the prospect at any moment.

“Uh, upstairs,” Will fumbled for an excuse. “I’m…tired. Going to bed.”

“It’s…barely four o’clock,” Beverly said, glancing at her watch.

“Yeah, well, I was dead yesterday. Sort of dead. Maybe, technically, dead, so, I’m very tired today. Now. So, I’m just gonna…yeah. Take a nap.” Will started edging towards the stairs, eyes flicking meaningfully between them and Hannibal. He hoped the bastard would take the hint and follow.

After a moment of probably crazed-looking eye pointing and head twitching on Will’s part, Hannibal stood with a creak of bone and a breeze of bandages, following Will complacently towards the stairs.

“Uh, alright?” Beverly called after him, looking like she had half a mind to follow. Probably to make sure Will didn’t drown himself in the bathtub or strangle himself with the sheets, since he no doubt looked like all his metaphorical screws had just come loose.

“I’ll see you later! Or tomorrow!” Will said over the banister with a manic wave, before dashing to the safety of his room. Hannibal followed at a more sedate pace, leaving Will to wait out of breath at the doorway for several painful seconds before he could slam it behind Hannibal, almost taking off one of his bandaged heels.

“What the hell was that?” Will jabbed an accusatory finger into Hannibal’s chest.

Hannibal took a moment before he replied, “She touched you without your permission.”

“Yeah?”

“You do not like that,” Hannibal explained patiently.

“Yeah!” Will agreed, angry and nonplussed.

“I thought perhaps punishment for this rudeness was in order.”

“It—that’s not—for god’s sake, Hannibal, death penalty for personal space violations? Really?” Will couldn’t decide if he should put his hands on his hips or around Hannibal’s neck.

Hannibal shrugged, an elegant movement of humerus and clavicle.

“You touch me without my permission all the time!” Will pointed out, “Are you going to rip your own throat out?”

“If that would please you,” Hannibal answered without missing a beat.

“If that would—?” Will repeated, disbelieving. He couldn’t deal with this.

A chirp from his shirt pocket only added to the utterly surreal situation. Will peeked down at his insectoid companion who he would say, if Will was in the habit of anthropomorphizing bugs, looked sad. Its mandibles drooped in a distressed sort of way, and Will found himself lifting it carefully out of his pocket with the gentle application of thumb and index finger.

The little creature’s antennae tracked towards Hannibal instantly, and Will held him out with a sigh.

“I think Stanley missed you.”

“Stanley?” Hannibal repeated, tone fond. Fonder than Will could handle, actually.

“Yeah. It just…fit.” He held his hand out more aggressively, and Hannibal gently repossessed the tiny passenger, cloth-wrapped fingers brushing Will’s in the process.

“Hello, Stanley,” Hannibal said very seriously to the bug, before tucking it into his ribcage like a dusty novel slipping back into its place on a shelf.

Will let out a breath, or rather, it felt like a breath was dragged out of him, the day’s tension finding the environment of his interior unbearable and so evacuating itself as best it could.

“Could you just…” The rest of that sentence hung, amorphous and glittering between them. Could you just…stop existing? Not do what you do? Bring me some aspirin and maybe a whiskey? Hold me close and tell me everything’s going to be alright?

Will finally settled on a small, achievable goal, “Please promise me you won’t eat, absorb, kill, or in any way harm my friend?”

“I have no desire to anger you, Will,” Hannibal replied carefully.

“That wasn’t a yes.”

“It wasn’t,” Hannibal acknowledged.

Will closed his eyes but it didn’t do any good, Hannibal’s form was etched, inverted snow-white on the black of his eyelids. It was worse, if anything, without the other visual input of the room to soften the unnatural glare of his existence.

Will let his eyes go wide, then, trying to take in everything from the heavy weight of the drapes to the carpet stain shaped oddly like Australia at the foot of the wardrobe, anything to not look at _him_.

The familiar surroundings took Will back to that morning, to his muscles screaming and his face jarred against the wooden bedpost. When it became clear that no amount of close inspection of the light fixtures was going to allow him to ignore the mummy hovering at his elbow, Will turned his critical mind’s eye to reexamine those events.

Hannibal had responded to Will’s independence with violence, then given up when it became clear this wouldn’t merit the desired results. Will wondered if Hannibal had been truly stymied, or if it had simply been an experiment, Hannibal pushing Will’s buttons to see what stuck. Or maybe it had been a test, of his strength, his mettle, his pliability. Or maybe Will really should look into the possibility of a brain tumor.

He almost considered Web-MD-ing ‘mummy hallucination,’ but thought better of it. Instead, he went to make true his excuse to Beverly and collapse into bed. He spotted Hannibal following him out of the corner of his eye, a dark shadow mirroring his movements with lithe grace. He took hold of one end of the comforter and Hannibal took the other, the two of them folding it back in neat sync. When Hannibal crawled under the sheets with him, Will was too tired to protest beyond a muttered, “Creep.”

Hannibal seemed amused at the insult, decreasing the space between them another few, tense inches. Will watched his movement with a forced sort of caution. His instincts didn’t react to Hannibal the way they should—the hair didn’t rise on the back of his neck, his skin didn’t prickle, he no longer felt the urge to fight or flee. He had to remind himself to be wary, to keep his guard up. To not let the strange feeling of tranquility that Hannibal exuded crawl its way inside Will.

But that was getting harder and harder to do. Especially in moments like these, when Hannibal looked almost vulnerable, his hands tucked beneath his head in lieu of a pillow as he returned Will’s stare with equal fervor, adding something warm and hungry to it. Hannibal looked almost beautiful lying there, resting on smooth white cotton and delicately lit by remnants of afternoon sunlight…

Will shuddered and rent that traitorous thought to pieces. He forced himself to focus on how the flesh of Hannibal’s cheek was still raw and perforated, green and gangrenous around the edges. Nothing about this was beautiful.

“Why do you struggle, Will?” Hannibal asked, words barely more than a whisper as they fled his lips across the sheets. “Why do you fight so hard against what could finally bring you the solace you’ve searched for all your life?”

“Solace,” Will muttered, sluggish. “Is that what you call dying.”

“You would not be dead,” Hannibal clarified, like an ever-patient English teacher trying to help his student grasp the finer points of Tolstoy, “You would be like me.”

“So, a murderous undead monster,” Will scoffed. “Gee, why don’t I want to snatch up that opportunity.”

“You do, Will. I can tell you indeed want to grab on tightly, with both hands, and never let go.”

Will closed his eyes, but it still didn’t help block out Hannibal’s presence. “If I wanted that…it wouldn’t make me a very good guy, would it?”

“It’s not my place to judge whether or not you are a good man, Will.”

“Oh, _now_ he’s humble,” Will grumbled.

Will’s eyes flew open at the gentle touch on his cheek. Hannibal withdrew his hand almost as quickly as he’d reached out, speaking again now that he’d re-secured Will’s full attention. “On the night you freed me, you did not push your friend out of the way of the oncoming train because you feared for her life. It was because you wanted to sacrifice yours.” He paused, leaving room for Will to object. Will considered doing so, for appearance’s sake, but decided he couldn’t be bothered. What use did a mummy have for appearances?

“I’m not suicidal,” Will finally said.

“Of course not,” Hannibal agreed easily. “You weren’t seeking the end. You were seeking me.”

“I wanted to join you,” Will tried the words out, and they tasted true on his tongue.

“Yes. You chose your path.”

“I haven’t chosen anything.”

Hannibal hmmed, contemplative. “Perhaps you have another choice awaiting you still. But, you did cast the first stone when you released me.”

Will squeezed his eyes shut. “I didn’t know what I was doing.”

“Didn’t you?”

“You’re really not making this easy for me,” Will hissed.

“I would make this as easy for you as breathing. Or rather, as easy as a cease to breathing. A permanent quiet, all for you.”

A sob clawed its way up Will’s throat, but he choked it back down. “Can I please just…” he paused, checking to be sure no other errant emotions would take the opportunity to escape through his mouth, “Can I just, uh, sleep on it?”

“Of course, Will. Time is no object.”

Will squeezed his eyes shut and fell into a dark, bottomless sleep with the gentle sensation of slender fingers carding through his hair.


	4. guess i'll go eat worms

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> chapter title from this charming (disturbing?) [children's song](https://www.mamalisa.com/?t=es&p=2387)

Toast. That was definitely toast, Will confirmed with a wrinkle of his nose. Oh god. Smelling toast where there was no toast, wasn’t that one of the first signs of a stroke? Will’s eyes flew open and he shoved himself upright in bed, covers tangling around his shoulder and half-pinning him back down to the mattress.

Hannibal set down a breakfast tray at the foot of the bed, laden with fine china and warm bread. His eyes darted with interest at Will’s situation, like he had half a mind to help Will extricate himself from the aggressively snuggly comforter, and the other half wanted to do…something else. Something that Will wasn’t nearly alert enough to contemplate.

Will was slightly disappointed that the toast turned out to be real, and not a sign of imminent mental and physical dysfunction. Though, considering who’d brought it there in the first place, he wasn’t ruling out madness just yet. How odd, he thought distantly, that I’m rooting for the loss of my mind.

“Tea?” Hannibal asked pleasantly, lifting a steaming pot.

“Sure,” Will said, voice scratchy. He watched as Hannibal poured, the rich, earthy smell of brewed leaves rolling over him. With the curtains of the four-poster still mostly closed, it felt a little like being buried alive in a particularly aromatic coffin.

Will took the proffered cup a second later and wondered if all breakfasts of the foreseeable future would feel this intense. He frowned down at the smooth white ceramic, patterned with strands of graceful blue, noting the slight indentation of a chip worn carefully down to a smooth, safe valley.

“Where did you get this?”

“Where does one usually get breakfast from?”

“A…kitchen?” Will squeezed one eye shut and let his head fall to the side, trying to imagine how this might have occurred. Did Hannibal snatch up the bread when no one was looking, arrange the china behind the chef’s back? Did some hapless hash-slinger catch sight of a teapot floating through the air, apparently on its own power? Or worse, had someone spotted a strange, bandaged figure wandering about the premises, assembling a simple but elegant breakfast spread as if he hadn’t a care in the world?

“Are you invisible, or immaterial, or both? Or neither?” Will asked, attempting to divine an answer to these many questions.

Hannibal’s reply was to wordlessly drag back the bed curtains with a frankly rather sultry amble. The room remained dark and Will blinked over at the shades, also drawn in an attempt to shut out the blinding light. Will was pretty sure they’d been open when he’d passed out.

“Could other people see you, if you wanted them to?” he ventured again. “You can clearly touch things, but you can also pass through them, right?”

Hannibal seemed to delight in not answering these empirical queries, so Will took another route.

“How long was I out?”

“Quite a while,” Hannibal replied promptly. “You were thoroughly exhausted. You slept straight through dinner, and then the night. Your friend visited yesterday evening—”

Will shot up straight at that, tea threatening to slosh out of his cup.

“—She observed the depths of your unconsciousness briefly, then left.”

“And you…” Will trailed off, tracking Hannibal’s face for any twitch of guilt, not that he expected the bastard had or would ever feel guilty about anything, “…you didn’t _do_ anything to her, right?”

Hannibal pursed his lips, then took a delicate sip of tea, saying nothing.

Will threw off the bedclothes with a final frustrated huff, bounding across the room in the jeans he’d fallen asleep in. No shirt though—had he taken that off last night? He paused at the door handle to shoot a now doubly suspicious glare back at Hannibal. He tried to communicate with his furrowed eyebrows, ‘if you hurt my friend or disrobed me while I was unconscious, I _will_ kick your ass, no matter what magical bullshit I have to pull to do it.’

Hannibal appeared to not get the message or, more likely, got it and was just mildly entertained by it.

Will huffed again and threw open the door, striding over to Beverly’s room and pounding on the thick oak.

“Beverly? You in there?” he called, knocking again. If she was in there, then 1) he was being extremely annoying and was likely about to receive an ass-kicking proportionate to the one he wanted to bestow on Hannibal, and 2) she was taking her damned time coming to stop his racket.

After another minute of pounding that was no doubt disturbing the neighboring guests to no end, Will stopped, stamped his foot, and turned on his heel to growl at Hannibal, “What did you _do_.”

Hannibal was lounging against the doorframe, delicately holding a tiny glass jar of marmalade in one hand and dipping a curious finger into its contents with the other. “You’ll have to be more specific,” he finally said, bringing a dap of marmalade to his lips and then sucking his finger into his mouth.

Will watched for a moment, caught between fury and something that was _most definitely not_ arousal at watching Hannibal’s lips (full and red and no longer bearing even a hint of burial-rot) close rapturously around the digit.

Fortunately, Will’s decision to either strangle an answer out of Hannibal or follow through on this sudden and unwelcome urge to jump Hannibal’s bones (oh god, now he was making skeleton puns too) was delayed by Beverly arriving at the top of the stairs, puffing and out of breath in sweats and a ponytail.

“Beverly!” Will called out as soon as he spotted her, voice weighted with relief.

“Uh, hi,” Beverly removed an earbud and raised an eyebrow. “You ok?”

“Me? I’m fine. And you’re fine too!” Will gestured at her figure, free of mummy-bites or other supernatural interference, with enthusiasm, “I mean, you know…”

“I don’t actually know,” Beverly replied easily, “Though if this is your belated way of hitting on me, I’m flattered, but not interested.”

“What?” Will sputtered, “That’s not—”

Beverly laughed and elbowed him in the ribs, “It’s a joke, dumbass. Though, before we interrogate your general inability to navigate humor, can I ask why you’re wandering the hall half-naked? Not that I mind the free show…”

Will glanced down, before crossing his arms defensively.

“She has a point,” Hannibal intoned over Will’s shoulder. He smelled like oranges and was giving off heat like a radiator, and Will was so thrown that he just stared at Hannibal until Beverly coughed significantly.

“You were gonna tell me what’s with the impromptu strip show?” she reminded him.

“Oh, come on,” Will grumbled, “it’s normal to sleep without a shirt.”

“So, you were…sleepwalking? Out in the hall, showing off your tits to anyone who happened to wander by?”

Hannibal laughed. “I’m glad I forsake consuming this one. I’d underestimated her entertainment value.”

“For god’s sake,” Will said, trying to direct this to both Hannibal and Beverly and ending up just sort of shouting at the lamp standing between them. “I wasn’t sleepwalking,” he continued, marginally more controlled and managing to redirect his gaze firmly to Beverly, “I was just…worried about you, and wanted to see if you were ok.”

“Why wouldn’t I be ok?” Beverly asked, crossing her arms to mirror Will.

He forced his posture to relax, in the most self-conscious and non-relaxed way possible. “I mean, there was…” he gestured futilely, “And also the thing…and—and the government agent guy!” he finally latched on to, “He could have been…annoying you.” Well, that was a weak closer. Beverly gave him a sympathetic look in mutual recognition of said weakness.

Will sighed and scrubbed a hand over his face in defeat (privately, he worried this ritual movement was becoming a bit of a trademark). “Maybe I’m just a little paranoid,” he admitted.

“Buddy, you’re a lot paranoid,” Beverly declared, “But don’t worry, it’s one of your more charming qualities.”

“Oh yeah? Pretty sure I don’t wanna know what my less charming qualities are, then.”

“That’s for sure…” They shared a laugh, and Hannibal apparently found this show of affection too dull to stand, whisking himself away to god knows where. Will’s brow furrowed and his heart prickled with something like loss at his sudden absence. Except it couldn’t be loss, because that would be _deeply stupid_.

“You’re going stir crazy,” Beverly diagnosed his returned surly expression. “You need to get out of here! Why do you think I decided to try taking up the world’s worst hobby, jogging?”

Will gave an exaggerated shudder. “Oh, the humanity…”

“It was as terrible as I’d imagined. But at least I wasn’t bored!”

This was a moment where they could have shared another laugh, but Will was too busy feeling determinedly not-wistful to notice.

“Seriously, Will,” Beverly sighed, “just…unclench.”

“I will be as clenched as I damn well please,” Will retorted crisply.

Beverly held up her hands in a parody of surrender. “It’s your funeral. If you wanna spend this accidental vacation drifting through the halls in the nude, like some sort of sad, sexy ghost, that’s your business.”

“Vacation?” Will frowned, bypassing the many other more objectionable elements of Beverly’s conclusion. This trip had seemed more akin to purgatory (if not quite hell) than a sandy beach. “I haven’t taken a vacation in years.” He drifted back to the last time someone had declared he looked sufficiently shit-like to demand he take a few days off and rest up.

Will thought back to that vacation. After he’d spent the requisite time fuming, moping, and feeling sorry for himself, he’d ended up having a very pleasant time fishing. For a week, he’d hardly left his favorite stream. He’d even entertained the notion of camping out there, though the siren call of indoor plumbing and other conveniences of modern living had enticed him home in the evenings.

Thinking of it now, crystal clear water flowing past him, a solid, attainable goal in front of him, people nowhere to be found… Will was downright entranced.

“Did you see any bait & tackle places in town?” Will asked, in what he realized only after speaking probably seemed like a pretty big non sequitur. But Beverly only took a moment to reorient before saying, “Um, not that I noticed, but I wasn’t really looking. I’m sure someone here could point you in the right direction. You wanna go fishing?”

No, I just want to buy a pack of wriggling redworms for the hell of it, Will didn’t say. She’s being nice, he counseled himself, do the same. “Yeah, I think it’d…I think it would be good.” The unspoken ‘for my incredibly shaky mental health’ went as unspoken as the previous snarky reply, but Beverly seemed to catch onto this one.

Will forced himself to speak to the woman propped up behind the front desk, avoiding her eyes by focusing on the patch of flour dusted over her gray-blond bangs, a rogue bit of breakfast hanging on for dear life. He watched her brush her hair out of her eyes in a practiced sweeping motion, the flour saying its final goodbyes.

He ended up acquiring directions to a very small, very pungent store manned by a very ill-tempered man whose lack of English was only matched by his lack of patience. Will couldn’t really blame him for either, since, if he owned a peaceful little tackle shop and a strange man blundered in and began pointing about in a confounding way whilst muttering in a foreign language, he’d be pissy too. In an unexpected turn of events, Hannibal appeared and began to translate the store-owner’s gruff Lithuanian into piecemeal English, enough for Will to begin to actually communicate.

He shot a single, cagey glare at Hannibal, as if daring him to fess up about why he was suddenly being so helpful. Hannibal’s answering look of innocence was explained a moment later, when, as Will was attempting to hand the appeased shop owner the correct amount of currency, Hannibal leaned in and licked Will’s face, jawbone to temple.

Will sputtered mightily, the sensation of Hannibal’s tongue rough against his stubble burning itself into his brain for eternity while he flailed and stumbled and swore and generally acted like a man possessed, or a man whose future held a firmly fitted straightjacket.

Hannibal gave a neat little smirk at the performance and said, “I believe you expressed curiosity earlier about the permeability of my being.”

The shop-owner, clearly oblivious to Hannibal’s existence (and _exceedingly_ inappropriate behavior), was now staring at Will like he was considering using the blunt end of the fishing pole he was selling him as a weapon, but Will threw down a few more bills of apparently large enough denomination to merit a reprieve. He escaped a moment later with a muttered apology that would no doubt smack into their language barrier and die a quiet death, carrying a very well-made rod, satisfactory tackle box, and set of flies.

Hannibal was now complacent at Will’s side, his taste for drama—and Will’s face—satisfied, at least temporarily.

Will was torn between fuming at the intrusion and performing some dreaded introspection about the strange, enticing bolt of energy that had struck through his ribs at the almost obscene closeness. Hannibal taking his flesh into his mouth, but not to bite or tear, just to….to see what would happen?

No, Will gave himself a mental shake. Fuming, definitely fuming. Anger is certainly the safer choice here.

He stomped over a set of railroad tracks, resolutely looking both ways and shooting a pointed look at Hannibal, whose answering expression said that butter wouldn’t melt in his mouth. Will shook his head and muttered something indistinct and uncomplimentary.

They tramped along in silence for a while, passing by a few neat one-story houses and eventually passing a plain brick building that revealed itself to be an elementary school when a stream of children came dashing and squealing out of it. The tiny figures quickly flowed over the meager playground, like so many brightly colored ants.

Will caught Hannibal’s curious gaze and something cold and terrified shifted in his stomach. “You wouldn’t…” he began to say, before he could stop himself.

Hannibal gave him a mild look, knowing what Will meant without his needing to bother to say it, and finding the thought rather uninspired. “I wouldn’t what? Cut off so early a life that’s barely even begun? Generally, no. It would be a pointless waste, a denial of great possibility, and of the uncertainty that keeps life vivid and meaningful.”

Hannibal strode forward while Will stumbled, reminding himself that the teacher giving him a shrewd once-over from across the road couldn’t see Will’s companion. He tried to speak out of the corner of his mouth so he could look marginally less like a lunatic.

“You’d never get to see what happens,” he concluded from Hannibal’s vague and pretentious speech.

“Yes.”

“So….you didn’t eat your own children.” It was more a statement than a question, and a loaded one at that.

Hannibal arched an eyebrow.

Will awkwardly fumbled for an explanation, “That first night…a local guy told me that you had—never mind.”

Hannibal looked chagrined but still clarified, “I ate no children, mine or otherwise. I, in fact, did not have children. They seemed…extraneous.”

Will picked up on the pause in Hannibal’s words, feeling that something other than air lived in that telling moment. “But…?” He prompted.

Hannibal huffed a sigh but was apparently in a generous mood, since he graced Will with a reply, “I had a sister. Mischa. As dear to me as my own child, perhaps more so, because I had not the weight of adulthood on my shoulders to drag my affections down to the lowly depths of mere reproductive instinct. She was very nearly all I had, and so her proportion of importance outweighed what she may have been reasonably owed.” He cut a glance at Will. “A sensation I have not often experienced.”

Will took Hannibal’s meandering narrative in hand, turning it this way and that until he found a latch and tugged. “Who killed her?” he asked, instinctively bracing for retribution at this insolence. But none came.

Hannibal strode thoughtfully alongside him, clasping his fingers behind his back in the manner of a scholar considering the deepest matters of the universe. “Their identity is irrelevant. Her pieces were rent asunder, and my memory of her with it. She exists only in fragments in my mind now. Hands like unborn stars. Her milk teeth, pearls fallen in the snow. The way she smelled before, and after.”

Will saw the pieces Hannibal spoke of coming together and then tearing back apart in his mind. He wished the terrible clarity would leave him but had no choice but to ride out the tidal wave of death, a tender child’s body clenched in the teeth of faceless men, and a beast in the shape of a boy crawling out of his human suit to rip the life from them in turn.

“I understand,” Will said, the words tumbling rough and unhewn from his mouth.

“Not entirely. Not yet.” Hannibal rounded on Will, the first warning sign of violence in the slash of his shoulder, “Do not mistake the particulars of my past as forming the whole of my present. Not Mischa, nor her butchers, nor my eternity in the tomb made me what I am. I made me.”

Will nodded. He’d never thought otherwise, even when Mischa’s blood stained the inside of his eyelids. “Right. Well, credit where credit’s due, I suppose. Though, I can’t say I love your work.”

A surprised laugh left Hannibal’s lips, startling Will. Hannibal reached out to wind two long fingers in Will’s hair, giving the curls a curt tug before releasing him. “What a delightfully appalling boy you are,” he smiled, serene.

“But that is where you began,” Will pressed as they resumed their journey, “You gave yourself form but that moment…it gave you direction.”

Hannibal shrugged, deflecting the statement but not burying it either.

“After that was when you started. But you couldn’t get away with it forever, could you? You were stopped.”

“There were those who objected to my art,” Hannibal conceded.

“I’ll say,” Will snorted. “They locked you up because you were a grotesque distortion of humanity. They call you a monster because they don’t have a word for you. Even ‘cannibal’ seems too benign to apply.”

“Cannibal,” Hannibal repeated the word slowly, rolling it around his mouth. “It does have a rather playful arrangement of consonants, doesn’t it?”

“Almost festive,” Will agreed.

“Accurate, though, in the literal sense,” Hannibal continued. “If banal. Proof that the consumption of death to achieve life is hardly novel.”

“Your particular tactics in the matter are.”

“Yes,” Hannibal agreed. “But that I am a unique strand in a common thread does not negate the larger tapestry of life turned to death, and back again.”

Will sighed. There didn’t seem to be much else for him to say. Arguing with Hannibal was like wrestling a bear: good exercise, until you got your head bitten off your shoulders. Will was too tired to deal with decapitation, metaphorical or otherwise, so he just marched forward towards the sliver of crystal water peeking out from between low-hanging branches.

He emerged upon a picturesque stream, glittering and pure, like it had just been plucked off a postcard for his individual enjoyment.

He readied his equipment and waded out into the water without hesitation, feeling more at home with every step.

Hannibal surveyed his progress from the shore, intrigued with this first sign of peace in Will’s tense frame. “How long do you intend to stand there?” he asked, after letting the stream sing past them for a few sparkling moments.

“As long as it takes. Why, you already bored?”

“Not at all. Your silhouette is a delicacy.”

Those words traced a sensuous shiver down Will’s spine.

“But,” Hannibal looked pointedly back towards the town, “If you intend to remain stationery for a significant length of time, I may choose to…run some errands.”

Will snorted. “You make it sound like you’re going to pick up a gallon of milk, not suck the life out of some innocent human beings.”

“The two are quite comparable, from my point of view.”

Will shook his head, threading a fly carefully into place. “Is that all we are to you? Walking, talking groceries?”

“To what ‘we’ do you refer?” Hannibal mused, “Because surely you must know that I do not consider you to be from the same… _shelf_ as the rest of the herd.”

“Mm, top-shelf human,” Will cast his line out automatically, hardly watching where it fell, “I’m honored. Better a fine whiskey than a shoulder of pork, I suppose.”

“The finest,” Hannibal murmured, the light glittering off the stream getting caught in his eyes, stuck in his web, “to be savored long into the cold night.”

Will couldn’t begin to describe how much he did not have a response to that. So, he just coughed and muttered, “You should shut up now, or you’ll scare all the fish off.”

“Unlikely.” Hannibal stepped pointedly forward, his legs not making the slightest ripple in the water, nor his bandages showing the least sign of dampness.

“Now you’re just showing off,” Will grumbled.

Hannibal slid neatly into Will’s personal space, hooking his chin over his shoulder, though Will couldn’t imagine there was much of interest to see from that perspective.

“You gonna lick me again?” Will asked, realizing with a flip of his stomach that he wasn’t entirely sure he wanted the answer to be ‘no.’

Hannibal merely hummed, then inhaled deeply, nose brushing against Will’s neck, pressing into the soft patch of skin just behind his ear.

There was a gentle gust of warm breath across his shoulder, all the warning he got before he felt Hannibal’s teeth close ever so delicately on the flesh of his throat. Will sucked in a sharp gasp and froze solid, no doubt looking like some sort of grotesque Christmas ornament, his fishing pole held out in front of him with comical poise.

Hannibal’s tongue flashed out to run along the almost imperceptible indentations his teeth had left before he continued the process, nibbling a curious path down the line of Will’s throat. And god, Will should be terrified right now. Because no matter if Hannibal had objected to the moniker of ‘vampire,’ there was no way Will should be letting a thing with a body count that high anywhere near a major artery.

He didn’t say or do anything to try and stop it, however, and he couldn’t chalk this reaction up to fear for his life. Although he might not always be the most self-aware when it came to emotion, that definitely wasn’t fear kindling hot in his gut, crawling along his extremities and making him _want_ what he absolutely should not.

The fishing pole nearly leapt from Will’s hand, propelled forward by the strength of the bite on the other end.

“Shit!” Will hissed, startled between the focus of an expert fisherman and the uncomfortable arousal he was trying so hard (no, not _hard_ , bad choice of adjective) to ignore. 

Hannibal, naturally, wasn’t startled in the least. He wove his arms around Will’s and Will felt briefly like a marionette, Hannibal tugging his strings to make him dance. But the metaphor fit badly because Hannibal’s touch didn’t push or prod, it merely held. It imparted strength, skin to skin, and together, they reeled the strong bastard in with perfect harmony.

Hannibal’s chest pressed against Will’s back and Will could feel their breath synchronize the moment the fish flew from the water, thrashing desperately for an impossible freedom. Will held the fish out—or maybe Hannibal did, Will couldn’t quite tell where he ended and Hannibal began—and watched it wriggle before them, round eye expressing a profound terror that was familiar and human in its intensity. 

“I should let him go,” Will said, finding his voice unsteady, “I never meant…” To hurt him, he almost said, but that wasn’t true. Wasn’t that precisely why he’d come out here? “…To keep him.”

Will reached out to try and free the wretched creature from its trap, but the second his fingers brushed against it blood began to drip and then gush from between its scales. Red, hot and viscous, filling the air with a stench Will had only encountered from afar, as a child passing a slaughterhouse packed with doomed cattle and more death than his ten-year-old self could fathom. He’d never pedaled so fast to get away on that little broken-down bike, scavenged from a junk yard. He wanted to pedal away now, _run_ away, but Hannibal held him firm, velvet skin over steel bone.

“Let it go,” Hannibal murmured, the words crawling into Will’s ear like insects. The sound was alive, burrowing into Will’s brain and heart and soul.

“I—I can’t,” Will gasped harshly, fingers now holding the tiny piece of abattoir in a death grip, and he could feel the fish’s heart beating out its life against his palm.

“Not the creature,” Hannibal hissed, “the fear. Fear of death, fear of what you are. Unseat it from that beautiful fortress inside your mind, you needn’t let it rule you any longer.”

Will fought for breath, feeling true, final death descend on the scaly meat in his hand. Hannibal was right, he was afraid, but he was wrong too. “I’m not ruled by anything,” he whispered, finally opening his hand to let free whatever it was that remained.

He spun around, wrenching out of Hannibal’s grip, and watched the last of the strange brutal scene fade. Red mist fluttered onto Hannibal’s rags, renewed to snow white cotton by now, sending a soft sunset-pink across his chest.

Will caught a glimpse of brilliant light in Hannibal’s eyes, as red as the blood staining Will’s hands, matched only by the fierce red of his mouth stretched in a shocked smile. The expression looked like it had been wrenched against its will out of the jaws of fury, and Will’s heart beat faster knowing that this pleasure, this _joy_ at his rebellion was the most real thing he’d seen cross that shifting visage of living death. Hannibal tore that look off his own face, but realized it was too little, too late.

“What do you want from me?” Will demanded to know in a harsh whisper.

Hannibal’s response was earnest and rushed, like a flood escaping against the gates of sense, “I want to _have_ you, I want to know the inside of your bones, I want to twine my fingers between your ribs—”

“You’ll have to buy me dinner first,” Will cut him off, sarcasm rising up to defend him from how much he was afraid that he wanted all of those terrible things too.

Hannibal’s blazing inner light dimmed by a fraction, packed away beneath a calmer façade. “You think this a courtship?”

“Isn’t it?”

“The word isn’t large enough to encompass the reality.”

“A placeholder, then. An inferior corollary that nonetheless does its best to represent in this world the meaning of its parallel in yours.”

“Which world are you in, this one or mine?”

“Neither, I think.”

Hannibal gave an abortive shake of his head, and Will caught glimpses of raging emotions battling in between cold calculations. Will realized why Hannibal was becoming easier to read: because his face was finally a real face, with pores and wrinkles and fine hair and all the tiny twitches of muscle and bone that telegraphed their brain’s contents.

“You know,” Will mused as he took in Hannibal’s pale brows and straight nose, his eyes chilling red rubies set within deceptively ordinary brown irises, avoiding for the moment the tempting curl of his mouth, “I thought when the rest of your face came back, you’d look less like you’d been constructed entirely of cheekbones.”

“My face is as it was, before.” Hannibal smiled one of what Will privately considered to be his Mona Lisa smiles. “Does it displease you?”

“No,” Will said without thinking. He paused, then said it again, because it was true. “No, I…I like it.”

He reached up, possessed with a curious impulse to touch and see if the skin was soft or leathery, being simultaneously old and new, depending on one’s perspective. Just before his fingers landed, he remembered himself and made to pull away. Hannibal didn’t let him. His hand closed around Will’s wrist, warm and firm. He brought Will’s hand up to his cheek and leaned into it, nuzzling at his knuckles.

Will sighed, a breathy sound he’d have been deeply embarrassed about if he’d noticed he’d made it.

“I’m glad it’s to your liking,” Hannibal whispered. He pressed a tender kiss to the back of each of Will’s fingers, moving with slow purpose along the sharp edge of Will’s hand as if he couldn’t bear to leave a centimeter untouched.

If Will was an objective outsider, he’d probably classify his own reaction to this worshipful attention as ‘swooning.’ He was, however, neither objective nor an outsider, and so simply let the experience wash over him, a pleasant stream sweeping him along to its source.

A subtle movement and Hannibal’s teeth glinted, yellow and uneven beneath his delicate lips. The stream turned to rapids, gushing snow-white over jagged rocks as the crystallization of growing desire abruptly metamorphosized into panic.

“Stop,” Will said, breathless as he jerked his hand free of Hannibal’s grasp.

Hannibal’s eyes were wide and innocent, as if to say, ‘What could I, a violent centuries-undead risen monster with a taste for human flesh have possibly done to concern you?’ What he actually said wasn’t that different. “Dear Will, what’s wrong?”

Will huffed, annoyance tinged with regretful fondness at the doting appellation. “I just didn’t think it was a smart move to dangle an hors d’oeuvre before a starving man.” Will wiggled his fingers pointedly.

“I would never damage your beautiful fingers,” Hannibal countered, “In fact, such a desecration would break my heart.”

“Really? Because you seem pretty intent on desecrating me in a lot bigger way.” Will listened back to that statement with a frown and determined, yep, that sounded way dirtier than he’d intended. He plowed on before the innuendo could linger any longer, “Listen, if I wanted to hallucinate horrible things and get half-seduced by a mummy, I could’ve stayed in my room. But I came out here to fish, so let me fish.”

Hannibal gave a half-nod, matched by a half-smile. “As you wish.”

When Will looked up to see if Hannibal seemed serious about letting him be, he found himself alone. He was briefly overwhelmed with a cold, choking loneliness. Water lapped against his boots and birdsong began to filter back into his ears. The world without Hannibal’s influence, Will realized, and he tried to root around in himself for some semblance of relief at that. He found none, and so just stared forward blankly, trying to let the peace of the stream take him over.

Will fished and tried not to think about how Hannibal was probably conducting rather similar behavior, except without Will’s generous catch-and-release policy. Will very pointedly did not think about the new corpses that were no doubt cropping up all over town as the sun crawled across the sky. He didn’t think about death as he ate his packed sandwiches and fished and walked along the stream’s edge and then fished some more. He didn’t think about it as the night sky, rushing above him like watercolor stealing over canvas, finally chased him out of the stream and back to his room. He didn’t think about it when he felt more than saw Hannibal on the bed beside him, diluted light bending and parting before him, the broken beams refracting off of Will and piercing his skin.

Hannibal leaned forward and Will realized too late, with a detached sense of alarm, that he intended to kiss him. His mouth was soft, chapped, and not as bloody as Will suspected it should be. Will parted his lips and invited Hannibal in.

He was just curious, that was all. He wanted to know if Hannibal would taste like dirt and sand and the wrenching sobs of families holding their loved ones’ desecrated corpses. Or if he would taste like peppermint and overcast days and the condensation of a cold glass of sweet tea gathering in the crook between thumb and forefinger on a hot day.

He didn’t taste like anything. He didn’t have a presence, not now, not when Will didn’t really want him to. Will let it continue anyway.

Will suspected that if he protested, Hannibal would stop. But he didn’t ask him to.

Hannibal broke the kiss on his own, slipping off of Will like oil on water.

“I’m tired,” was all Will could say.

“I know.”

Will rolled onto his side, away from Hannibal, and then back to face him. He closed his eyes, and felt Hannibal lay a hand along his neck, pressing down gently until he slipped out of the grip of consciousness.

He dreamt Hannibal was drowning him, holding his head under while he spoke to Will with words he couldn’t understand. Will opened his mouth to reply and the cold water filled his lungs and then his veins. He could breathe now, and he used his first liquid breath to tell Hannibal a terrible secret, before pulling Hannibal under the surface with him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hope you enjoyed this bit of rising tension~  
> tomorrow we meet some more familiar faces, and the drama continues!


	5. deracinate

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> chapter title courtesy of my professor using this word four times in a row without context or explanation, until I gave in and googled the damn thing (to save you the trouble: “to uproot”)

Price and Zeller. They had first names, Will was pretty sure he could even remember them if he tried, but they were so infrequently used that it was a bit of a wasted effort on their parents’ parts. The two were also so rarely seen outside the other’s company that Will wondered sometimes if they were incapable of existing without the other, like a mirror with nothing to reflect.

“Hey!” Beverly hugged each of them in turn, “Glad you guys made it.”

“Oh, like we’d miss out on this?” Price gestured wildly with his carry-on while Zeller finished dragging his luggage out of the back of a cab. “Collapsing caves, near-death experiences, borderline supernatural phenomenon? Wouldn’t miss it for the world.”

“Also, glad you’re not actually dead, Will,” Zeller piped up, giving Will a nod. Will returned it with the requisite mixture of professionalism and friendliness.

“So,” Price clapped his hands, “other than not-dying, what’s up with you guys?”

Beverly grinned. “Not much with me. Will, however…”

Will groaned. He’d known he’d regret telling Beverly anything, much less the mostly uncensored truth.

That regret was confirmed and doubled when Beverly said, with great relish, “Will is having visions of a weird undead mummy thing that’s super freaky, but also he kinda wants to fuck him.”

“I do not!” Will protested, “I mean...” It was an accurate and to the point summation of the situation, if he was honest with himself, which he really didn’t want to be. And he definitely hadn’t mentioned the whole “kinda want to fuck him” part, but Beverly was, unfortunately, right on the money.

“Cool,” Zeller concluded. “And kinky.”

“Wait, the dual male pronoun usage is confusing,” Price frowned at Beverly, “Is it the mummy who wants to fuck Will, or does Will want to f—”

“Alright!” Will threw both his hands up like he was directing traffic, “If anyone speaks another word about anything, ever, I’m going to…” He trailed off, not having actually thought up a threat for this situation.

“Sic your hot mummy boyfriend on us?” Price offered helpfully.

“Yes,” Will sighed, “I will.” He glanced surreptitiously around, but didn’t spot Hannibal, thankfully. Will doubted he’d be able to identify sarcasm and Will really didn’t want to be responsible for Hannibal snacking on Price’s spleen because of a miscommunication.

“Well, I’m afraid Mr. Sexy Mummy might already have a fight on his hands,” Price waggled his eyebrows, “because we spotted your girlfriend in first class.”

“My _what_?” Will sputtered. If he had a girlfriend, he was not privy to this information.

“Alana Bloom,” Price explained with a gleam in his eye. “She’s still a peach, nodded and smiled at us even though we must’ve looked like a pair of slovenly economy-class peasants next to her majestic, champagne-sipping self.”

“Alana,” Will repeated, relaxing. There was a blast from the past. They’d parted ways not long after he’d recovered from the encephalitis bout; Alana saying something about professional curiosity and conflicts of interest that Will didn’t quite understand.

“Still carrying a torch, eh?” Price suggested hopefully, and Will rolled his eyes.

“Categorically no. It was nothing,” Will demurred, flinching slightly. It seemed unfair to call Alana “nothing,” but expedience won out over correctness or politeness. “I haven’t even talked to her in years. And anyway, isn’t she married now?”

“To a woman,” Price said with gusto, “an heiress.” He sighed dreamily, “D’you suppose I could find an heiress to marry? Or an heir, I’m not picky.”

“Hey,” Beverly gestured to Zeller, “what is he, chopped liver?”

“Oh, it’s alright,” Zeller waved it off, “we’re in agreement on this one. If either of us has the opportunity to marry rich and/or famous, we’ve agreed to take it.”

“But to return to the previous topic,” Price made a circular gesture with both pointer fingers, “Just for the record, you shouldn’t.”

He looked pointedly at Will, who blinked. “I shouldn’t what?”

“Fuck the mummy,” Price said, matter-of-factly.

“Oh.”

“I second that,” Beverly piped up.

“No matter if he offers you riches or world domination, this sort of thing always ends badly,” Price declared with confidence.

“This sort of thing?” Zeller echoed, “Are you the expert on mummy-seductions now? Do you have a degree in monster-shenanigans that I’m unaware of?”

“I’ve seen movies,” Price said, as if that settled that.

“Yeah, I wasn’t planning on it,” Will cut in quickly, before this godforsaken conversation could go on a second longer. 

“Good.” They all nodded at each other, and Zeller blessedly broke up the nodding-fest by suggesting he and Price head up to their room so they could crash post-Atlantic-flight.

Will agreed and added that he could do with a nap himself (nap in this case being code for: Hannibal had just made his daily dramatic entrance, and Will wanted to get the ghostly bastard away from his increased pool of comrades/potential appetizers). Beverly naturally pointed out that they’d only been awake for a few hours, but Price pointed to Will’s drawn face and said, “This sorry state of affairs would indicate extreme sleep deprivation. Dr. Zeller?”

“Agreed. Copious amounts of bedrest recommended,” Zeller yawned.

“Not gonna argue with a pair of doctorates,” Will shrugged.

“Actually!” Zeller began with glee, and Will winced, because he knew very well the story of Price’s technically-not-as-yet-but-absolutely-any-day-now-will-be-finished dissertation and the subsequent withholding of the title of doctor.

“Novice mistake, bringing that up,” Beverly muttered under her breath to Will, “you really must be exhausted.”

“I really must be,” Will agreed.

“These two,” Hannibal began, floating up alongside Will, “are quite annoying.” He said it in the same tone that one might employ when observing a well-fed turkey frolicking about on the eve of Thanksgiving.

“It’s part of their charm,” Will said, at a higher volume than was advisable.

Zeller, Price, and Beverly turned as one to stare at him.

“Talking to that, er, mummy of yours?” Beverly asked, not unkindly.

“Yes, actually.”

Zeller looked concerned, while Price merely looked curious.

“What’s he saying?” the latter asked, staring into the space that he apparently imagined the mummy occupied. Hannibal, fully four feet away from this spot, looked like he had a few more choice comments. Or perhaps, that he was thinking Price would make for a few choice cuts.

Will hurriedly said, “Nothing good, he never says anything good, please excuse me,” and pushed past the trio to take the stairs two at a time. Hannibal followed with a wistful sigh and Will’s shoulders unbunched minutely. Mercy, for at least a little while longer. 

“You don’t care for them either,” Hannibal noted, leaning over Will’s shoulder as Will wrestled with the lock on his door. The key shook in his hand, or maybe it was his hand that was shaking. Hannibal was so warm.

“Just because they irritate me on occasion doesn’t mean I want you to barbecue them,” Will hissed, finally getting the bolt to click open and shoving his way inside. He slammed the door in Hannibal’s face, but Hannibal’s face merely ghosted through the thick wood, followed by the rest of him, like a carnivorous Jacob Marley. He didn’t seem particularly insulted, perhaps because he knew what a futile gesture it had been.

“Do you have to be so…so…” Will gestured up and down the length of Hannibal’s figure, looking slantwise at him from beneath his glasses, “fucking spooky?”

“Spooky?” Hannibal repeated, exaggerating the long vowel and inadvertently eliciting a snort of laughter from Will. Hannibal looked like he couldn’t decide whether to be offended or charmed by this.

“I mean, so…you know,” Will tried fruitlessly to explain, “Walking through doors and shit. Wandering around talking to me when no one can see you or touch you, generally making me look nuts.”

“Making you look…nuts,” Hannibal pronounced this word carefully, as if wary it would set off another attack of laughter, “isn’t any particular goal of mine. And complete, consistent visibility and tangibility aren’t out of my reach, they’re simply not currently desirable.”

Will narrowed his eyes. He could hear something else, a bigger truth Hannibal had just waltzed around.

“Are you hiding?” he asked, and Hannibal’s practiced non-reaction answered the question for him. “Wow, that’s…huh.”

Hannibal unbuttoned his suit jacket with one casual hand, dropping neatly onto the settee. Will vaguely noted that he hadn’t been wearing anything so modern as a suit before—where the hell had that come from? Did they have Brioni in the mummy-dimension?

Hannibal finally deigned to reply, “In an era where flesh-piercing projectiles are common household goods and explosive power to level temples can be contained in technology the size of a fist, discretion seems the better part of valor.”

“So, yes, you’re hiding,” Will confirmed, feeling comforted—concerned? No, no, definitely comforted—at the idea that human technology might be able to make a dent in Hannibal’s supernatural-ness. “Because we can hurt you.”

“Your lack of subtlety is lamentable, Will. Rude, even.”

Hannibal’s piercing glare bounced harmlessly off of Will, who didn’t see it and probably wouldn’t have cared even if he did. “Well, god forbid I be rude to a murderous, cannibalistic, sadistic undead mummy who has a habit of breaking into my room at all hours of the day and night without so much as a knock.”

Hannibal tilted his head, considering, then stood. He walked over to the door, and then through it.

A knock sounded. Will hung his head. He went to the bed and crawled on top of it. The knock came again. Will contemplated screaming into a pillow but couldn’t quite drudge up the energy. The knock, again. And then, because he figured the bastard just might wait outside for his summons long enough for some innocent neighbor to stumble upon him and get turned into an afternoon snack, Will said, “Come in.”

Hannibal clicked the door open and peered inside, waiting for Will’s impatient beckon until he crossed the threshold. “I shall endeavor to be more polite in the future,” he said, and Will hated that he both probably meant it, and that abstaining from wanton murder of the general populace didn’t fall under the umbrella of “polite” in Hannibal’s book.

Will rolled over in bed and buried his head in the biggest, fluffiest pillow at hand. As methods of shutting out the world and one particularly irksome mummy in particular went, this one had proven entirely unsuccessful. But there’s something to be said for persistence, so Will stayed hidden until preternaturally strong hands pried his soft shelter away from his ears.

Whatever Hannibal was about to say or do was lost, however, in the generic trill of Will’s phone ringing.

Will dragged the phone out of his pocket and stared. It continued to ring. This was rather typical behavior of phones writ large, but not Will’s specific one. Only about five people had his number, and three of them were down the hall. One was his boss, who knew well enough to contact the far-more-reliable Beverly for any work-related inquiries, and the other was his father, who would only call him if hell had frozen over—which, upon reflection, actually might be in the forecast.

Will accepted the call with a cautious, “…Hello?”

“Hi, Will!”

The distinctly feminine and non-fatherly voice on the other end let Will in on an unforeseen sixth possibility, which was that Alana Bloom had extracted his number from one of the above possessors and was now contacting him. Via the phone. The phone Will was holding, and was probably supposed to be talking into. Dammit.

“Alana? Uh, hey.” His greeting sounded morose even to Will, who was pretty tone deaf to the wider category of sad-sack-sounds, but he didn’t have anything cheerier to offer at the moment. 

“Hi,” Alana repeated kindly, “I expect you may have heard from your colleagues that I’m in your neck of the woods.”

“Not really my neck of the woods, technically, I’m just visiting,” Will said, because he was an idiot.

“That’s true,” Alana agreed, and wow, Will had forgotten about her gift for the diplomatic. “But since we’re both visiting here, I was hoping we could get together.”

“Uh….”

“To be clear, this would be a professional meeting.”

“Professional?” Will echoed, possibly even more wrong-footed than before.

“I’m involved in a group with a vested interest in the archaeological site you were exploring. I’d like to speak to you on their behalf about your…experience.”

_Shit, shit, shit_. “Well, I think—”

“I’m actually outside your B&B. Waiting in the black Mercedes, if you’d care to join me.”

Will categorically did not want to join her. He also hadn’t gotten the impression he had any real choice in the matter.

“Why do I feel like if I say no, a bunch of burly guys with shaved heads and semi-automatics will bust in and drag me out?”

“That’s silly, Will.” Her tone was off, though, and Will felt just the tiniest bit grateful that he had a blood-thirsty mummy on his side, in case Alana really had gone full-metal-archeologist and brought armed guards to extract him. 

Hannibal, who had, of course, been listening to the whole exchange, looked intrigued. Fuck. This whole thing boded so, so badly.

“Alright, I’ll…I’ll be down in a second,” Will said, because he was still an idiot.

“Great!” Alana hung up and Will dropped the phone like it had grown fangs.

“How unexpected,” Hannibal said, as if he’d just reached the first twist in an Agatha Christie mystery, “Who is this woman?”

“A friend. An ex-more-than-friends,” Will said, scratching the back of his neck and making even more of an effort than usual to avoid Hannibal’s eyes, “She’s a doctor, or she was, now she sounds different. Really different.”

“Curiouser and curiouser.”

Will rolled his eyes and dragged himself off the bed, “Let’s go, Alice.”

They weren’t precisely guards, but they were definitely armed. Two men, standing on either side of the very shiny, very expensive car as Will approached. They watched Will with eagle eyes as Hannibal circled them unseen, hungry. He snapped his teeth near their throats and delighted in Will’s answering flinch. The two exchanged looks at Will’s behavior, then one stepped forward to pat him down.

Will huffed indignantly, and when the other man finally saw fit to open the back door and reveal Alana in the luxurious backseat he grumbled, “Hell of a welcome, Dr. Bloom.”

“Sorry,” she said, and it sounded genuine. “Protocol. You understand.” She straightened one sleeve of her black-and-white pinstripe suit, the dark red nails of her hand like thick drops of blood. Will expected them to smear, dark and terrible against her white vest.

“No, I don’t understand. What kind of protocols are there around the friendly—sorry, professional—reunion of a shrink and an archaeologist?” The door slammed shut after Will, and Hannibal settled himself atop the mini-bar across from him, watching the exchange with interest.

“More than you’d expect,” Alana replied with a twinkle in her eye, “especially when mummies are involved.”

Well, fuck. What the hell was Will supposed to say to that?

As if reading his mind, Alana told him with a reassuring wave of her hand, “You don’t have to say anything now. Just think about what you might want to share, and I’ll tell you everything I know when we get to the Institute.”

Will wanted to know what the Institute was. Will wanted to know what the fuck Alana knew about mummies. Will wanted to know what the fuck Alana thought _Will_ knew about mummies. But he kept his mouth shut, because Hannibal was looking less amused and more…well, definitely not scared. Apprehensive, maybe. And whatever could give Hannibal pause could give Will cardiac arrest, so shutting up seemed the safest option.

The car ride proceeded in stiff silence all the way to the edge of town, where they pulled up beside a massive fallen tree.

Will looked at the tree. He looked at Alana. Alana looked at the tree, then looked at Will, then smiled. The larger of the muscle, stuffed into the car’s passenger seat, produced a walkie talkie and relayed some sort of code. There was a pregnant pause and then the tree decided with a soft mechanical rumble that it would rather lay fallen elsewhere and began to roll away, revealing a thin, paved road beneath its bulk.

The car roared forward and the tree, apparently being rather indecisive, trundled back to its old position.

“Have you joined the goddamned CIA?” Will asked, gripping the edge of his seat, because honestly. Secret, hidden bases.

“Nope. Private sector money’s better.” Alana gestured grandly as a stately brick building came into view, old-fashioned in design but decked out with bleeding-edge security. “Welcome to the Verger Institute.”

“Verger…” Will repeated, the name familiar.

“My wife’s family,” Alana confirmed, “Her brother Mason’s the big picture guy, I’ve taken over on-the-ground operations.” Her lip curled when she mentioned the brother and Will mentally filed this away as potentially useful information.

After a series of keycards and passcodes, the car slid into a sleek underground garage and Alana led Will to a stainless-steel elevator.

“Very cattle-being-led-to-slaughter aesthetic you’ve got going on here,” Will said mildly, clasping his hands behind his back, “Cozy.”

Alana and Hannibal laughed at the same time, and Will wondered with donning horror if he had a type.

“I’m sorry for all the cloak-and-dagger nonsense,” Alana apologized while Hannibal sniffed curiously at her hair and Will tried not to look like he was having an aneurysm at the sight, “but it’s kind of hard to avoid in this line of business.”

“And what exactly is this line of business?”

The elevator slid to a stop and opened with a very sci-fi swoosh, and instead of answering his question, Alana just led Will into the center of a large glass-and-metal dome. Computers and lab stations and artifact containment units lined the curved walls, but Will’s gaze was drawn to a recessed platform sunk in the center of the room. Unfamiliar chinks in the metal circling it hinted at the existence of strange and terrible machines, while the thin, shiny gutters trailing out from it like an inverted spiders web filled instantly with rivers of fresh blood in his mind.

Alana started speaking and Will dragged his attention back to her, though part of his mind stuck like vulnerable flesh on frozen metal, trapped in the pristine steel pit.

“The Verger Institute has four primary objectives: recognize, contain, examine, destroy. We investigate any and all dangers that fall outside the purview of traditional governmental and legal bodies. This is one of our satellite operations. Headquarters is in London because, well,” she rolled her eyes, “Imperialism, racism, perceived center of the world, etc. But, this facility has been well-maintained for a number of years, ever since we learned about Him.”

Will didn’t ask who He was at first because, well. There He was, peering into test tubes a dozen feet away like an over-curious cocker spaniel. Will realized that Alana was watching him, waiting for him to ask the obvious question—he finally did, but too late.

“Uh, who?”

Alana pursed her lips. Red. Skeptical. She crossed her arms, “The beast. Buried centuries ago for the rest of his cursed existence in the deepest pit the good people of this land could find. Bound by the earth, lest he rise and feast on the flesh of the innocent.”

“A scary enough story,” Will turned away, puttering aimlessly around the room’s staggering circumference, “though a bit clichéd.” 

“They always bellow about the innocent,” Hannibal said, in lockstep with Will, “Like they have no blood on their own hands. I don’t mind judgment, but I can’t stand hypocrisy.”

“All stories come from somewhere,” Alana countered, taking up position in the center of the room, beside the trench that Will simultaneously couldn’t look at and couldn’t stop looking at. “And it didn’t take much digging to show that this story’s got a hell of a dose of truth behind it.”

Will didn’t know what to say. He wasn’t a spy, for gods’ sake, or much of an actor. He preferred hermithood to subterfuge, but he didn’t think running away would work in this situation. Least of all because those doors looked like reinforced steel, and he didn’t think Alana would willingly let him go just yet.

“Listen, we can talk tall tales if you want,” Will began, in a tone he thought was casual but probably came off more as constipated, “But could you just get to the point?”

“Alright.” Alana waited until Will ground to a halt and did a passable job of paying attention. “I want to know what happened in those caves.”

“I’m sure you already know,” Will parried, “With resources like this? Local cops would fold in a second.”

“Yes, I have access to all the local reports, as well as those of the increasingly large and concerned numbers of Lithuanian and international agencies flooding into this corner of the world.”

Will shrugged as if to say, well, there you go.

“There’s one particular report from an Agent Varnas—”

Will scoffed loudly. “Oh please, that kid’s so green, he could be a muppet.”

“He—what?”

“It’s—he—he could be Kermit,” Will explained, regretting the metaphor, “Y’know, the muppet.”

“Oh, yes.” Alana looked slightly thrown, and Will supposed that could be considered a minor victory. “Nevertheless, he has verified with a local mortician that you were found quite dead at the scene of the freak train accident.”

“Yeah, it didn’t take,” Will sighed. “Probably because I wasn’t really dead. It was just a misunderstanding.”

“Hmm. Hell of a misunderstanding.” Alana had her phone out and was scrolling pointedly through something, “Especially considering that less than an hour before, you’d come running out of the caves and into the closest bar, where you spoke with a local gentleman—Darius?—about the beast in the pit.”

Will squirmed. Dammit, random-old-man-in-the-bar, couldn’t you keep your trap shut?

“I should also point out that you returned to Dr. Karolina Rubis—the same mortician who dealt with your, hmm, shall we call it a mislabeled condition?—for a battery of tests the next day. You were saying some very strange things, according to her notes.”

Will strained to remember what he’d said. Whatever it was, it was probably pretty damning.

“The results came back as normal,” Alana continued, “but you’ll understand that we had them impounded anyway.”

Will scuffed the toe of his shoe against the impeccable tile. “Did you impound Karolina too?” 

“Of course not, Will. Listen,” Alana had adopted a sympathetic tone, honed through many years of psychiatric practice, before she’d joined up with whatever the fuck this was, “I can only imagine what might have happened to you in those caves. It’s understandable that you might not want to talk about it, that it seemed too weird, too unbelievable. You might’ve even convinced yourself that it wasn’t real, that you imagined it all.”

“There was nothing to imagine!” Will insisted, “I mean, there was a cave-in, but nothing…” he waggled his fingers in a way that hopefully evoked supernatural nonsense.

“I think you’re lying to me, Will,” Alana said calmly. “And that’s fine, you have no real reason to trust me, not after all this time. But if you don’t talk to me… Well, there are others involved in this. Less friendly people. They won’t be as understanding as me.”

“Glad we’ve officially arrived at the threats portion of this little chat,” Will snapped, “Might as well cut to the chase, because I have nothing to say to you. How did you even find me?”

“It was easy, Jack told me.” Alana was circling him now, Hannibal following unbeknownst in her footsteps. Will was steadily losing his ability to pretend the mummy wasn’t there, eyes flicking from Alana to Hannibal, pleading with him not to take a bite out of his old friend, no matter how sinister she had become.

“Jack?” Will couldn’t even imagine that conversation. Surely, Jack, one of the most impeccably sensible men Will had ever met, wouldn’t entertain for even a minute any talk of mummies or ancient curses. “Did you think he’d be able to give you the low-down on your mythical cave beast? Maybe the Loch Ness monster, while you’re at it?”

Alana’s exasperation began to show. “Jack’s been around a long time. He knows a lot. He’s sympathetic to the Institute’s cause. But you’re right, he doesn’t believe. Do you _believe_ , Will?” She stared up at him, and he couldn’t avoid her big, searching eyes.

Will’s poker face was rusty, buried underneath several copies of his more frequently utilized I-genuinely-don’t-give-a-shit face, and he could feel it cracking under Alana’s unrelenting gaze. “Belief requires a stable grounding in reality from which to build,” he hedged carefully, “and reality and I aren’t really on a speaking basis.”

Alana still didn’t break her stare. “Have you been seeing things?”

Hannibal’s face loomed over Alana’s shoulder. Will’s eyes twitched towards him and Alana followed the movement. She spun around, searching the room. Hannibal stood inches from her nose, smiling gleefully.

She turned back to Will, reaching beneath her jacket as she did. Will saw the glint of a gun and wondered first when the gentle doctor had started packing, and second if she really thought bullets would make a dent in something like Hannibal. “Will, have you seen _him_?”

Will was ready with the right answer this time. “Him who?”

“You know who,” Alana pressed, stepping right up to Will’s chest. With Hannibal breathing invisible down her throat, she was the meat in the world’s worst human sandwich and she didn’t even know it. The thought made Will want to laugh, and he only barely stifled it.

“Do you see him?” Alana repeated, hands clenched at her sides as if to keep from grabbing Will by the shirtfront, “Do you see him _here_?”

Will said nothing, and now Hannibal was at his side, nuzzling his neck. “It’s alright,” he murmured against Will’s skin, “You can tell her if you like. She might be one of the only people on the planet who’d actually believe you.”

“Shut up,” Will whispered desperately, closing his eyes.

“Will,” Alana said, almost crooning, “It’s okay, you’re not alone. We’ve dealt with monsters like him before, we can help you.”

“You can’t,” Will said, and he meant it, just not the way he should. He sought out Hannibal’s hand and found it in a second, tangling their fingers together roughly. Hannibal’s skin was dry and warm and entirely corporeal, and Will was afraid to imagine a world where this gruesome creature wasn’t at this side.

“I don’t need help,” Will said with someone else’s voice. Just someone’s—perhaps one of the townspeople, perhaps one of the long-dead skeletons he’d unearthed in his work. An appropriately ordinary yet firm citizen of the world who thought mummies were a load of rubbish and just wanted to go home, pay taxes, and water his gardenias.

“There’s nothing wrong with me and I don’t know anything that can help you.” The lying was easy, now, with Hannibal’s strength pulsing through their connection. He slipped into deceit like a perfectly tailored suit and smiled at Alana with Hannibal’s crooked teeth, just enough of a glint for her to step back. “I wish you well, but I don’t have any more time to spend on conspiracy theories.”

Will strode confidently for the door, and he could feel Alana’s consternation, her fear, her temptation to sound the alarm. Her temptation to pull her weapon.

“You shouldn’t leave, Will.”

He stopped, just short of the steel door. Or perhaps it was titanium, Will didn’t know what the fashion was in secret, privately funded monster-hunting bases. Hannibal licked the door, curious, and determined, “Titanium alloy. Also, there are at least five heavily armed guards on the other side. Do you want me to take care of them? And her?”

Will shook his head slightly and half-turned back to Alana. “Is that a threat, Doctor Bloom?” 

“Will.” Alana’s gentle, pleading tone didn’t affect him because she was right, he wasn’t alone.

“So, I’m your prisoner, then?” he asked, rapping the imposing door with his knuckles.

“Of course not.”

“Then I’d like to leave.” Will tossed her a stranger’s smile over his shoulder and added, “I’d also appreciate a ride back to town.”

A tense moment stretched between them, Hannibal a weight on the straining thread. It snapped with Alana’s defeated sigh.

The gun was hidden beneath the line of Alana’s jacket and she was once again the same bright, kind woman he’d met years ago. “I’ll have one of my people take you back to town. But please,” she produced a business card and held it out, “call me if you do see anything. If you change your mind.”

“I’ll do that,” Will took the card and shoved it in his pocket, lingering impatiently near the door until Alana scanned her palm and it roared open.

Will was silent on the ride back with the larger of the two muscle-bound guards he’d met earlier, Hannibal blessedly quiet in the backseat. Will pondered whether or not Hannibal even needed to ride in the car, considering his apparent ability to teleport. Will would have to ask him that. Will had to ask him a lot of things.

The car growled to a halt in the center of the village, and a dark look from the driver (from behind black sunglasses, naturally) told Will that this was his stop. He got out without bothering to say thanks and nearly got his heels run over for his trouble.

“Rude,” Hannibal noted, and Will nodded his agreement. He wouldn’t mind if that man met an unfortunate end on his return to the Institute, he realized, and that lack of compassion sparked a meager flame of guilt.

He watched Hannibal watch the retreating car, then said, “I feel I should be thanking you.”

Hannibal cocked an inquiring eyebrow at him.

“For, you know. Not eating them,” Will clarified.

“There was no reason to. You handled the situation admirably. And your good Doctor Bloom is an interesting woman.” Hannibal smiled sharply, “I prefer to save the best for last.”

“I’d prefer Alana wasn’t on the menu at all, even for dessert.”

“Your preference is noted. However, like all creatures, I’ll take whatever steps I deem necessary to survive.”

Survive? Will wondered. Surely, survival was a foregone conclusion. In all this time, the idea of Hannibal dying hadn’t even occurred to Will. It seemed faintly ridiculous. It conjured up an image of a little cartoon grim reaper waving a tin scythe at Hannibal, who would give the tiny merchant of death a bemused fraction of a nod before flicking him away with an elegant index finger, in the way you would an ant that’s crawled onto your picnic blanket. 

“Can you be killed?” Will asked abruptly, eyes catching on Hannibal’s lashes as if to protect him from the full force of Hannibal’s gaze.

Hannibal was uncharacteristically slow in responding. “I feel that you would be able to tell if I lied in response to that, and yet, it seems against my best interests to answer truthfully.”

“So, yes, you can.” This time Will hesitated before the words tumbled free of his lips, “…can _I_ kill you?”

Hannibal’s answering smile was shaded with affection and menace in equal measure. “Only you know the answer to that, my dear Will.”

Will had a hideous, glorious feeling that not only did he know the answer, but that the answer was: he, and _only_ he, had the power to put an end to Hannibal’s ascending rule.

The thought made bile rise in his throat.

“Alana can’t kill you,” Will stated, more than asked.

“No. But, she may have access to resources that could confine me as these people did so very, very long ago.”

“She could—she could put you back in the tomb?” Will asked, and there was no mistaking the horror in his voice.

“In theory, yes.” Hannibal smiled, and it was so sharp Will could almost feel it slicing into his skin, could sense blood trickling from the gash left in its wake. “But I’m not terribly concerned. After all, you won’t let that happen.”

“You sound awfully sure.”

“I have faith. A rather novel sensation, admittedly, but not an unpleasant one.”

“I’ve never had faith in anything,” Will muttered, peeling off his glasses to press the back of his hand over his eyes.

His closed lids didn’t stop Hannibal’s image from imprinting itself on his irises, a ghostly frown as he declared, “That is by your own design. Faith is not given, but taken. You must reach out.”

“Will?” And that was Beverly’s voice. Of course. Because a second to regroup from that goddamned bombshell was just too much to ask.

Will shoved his glasses back on his face and spotted her waving from halfway down the block, where she’d just bustled out of a small café in a burst of pastry-smells and chatter. Why was this town so damn small?

“Hi,” Will replied, shuffling in place as she skipped towards him.

She had on her charming-for-company smile and Will got the distinct impression of impending…something.

“I knocked on your door and didn’t get an answer, I figured you were sleeping,” She flipped her hair over her shoulder, “Guess you found something better to do.”

Will froze. Because Beverly was... Well, she was _looking_. She was looking in Hannibal’s direction with little curious quirks of her chin. Will turned to see what could be catching her eye, but just saw Hannibal standing primly with a mischievous smile playing around his lips. Will narrowed his eyes at him, trying to silently communicate, ‘what are you up to now, you old snake?’

“So…” Beverly dragged the vowel out, “Are you going to introduce me to your friend, or just keeping acting like he’s invisible?”

“What?” Will goggled at her. “Wait. You—you can _see him_?” Whatever façade of calm Will had managed to piece together imploded.

“Uh, yeah?” Beverly’s eyebrows were so high they threatened to fly off her forehead like spooked UFOs. “Will, you’re being kind of weird. And impolite. Even for you.”

“What? No! You don’t—” This was impossible. This was a disaster. This was—this was— “He’s—he’s the mummy!” Will shouted, gesturing furiously at Hannibal like a demented Jeopardy host showing off a prize, “He’s the fucking _thing_ I’ve been hallucinating!”

“Don’t be concerned, Miss,” Hannibal cut in with a suave smile, “I’ve been telling him ghost stories and I do believe I’ve rather riled my new friend up. I’ll see to it that he calms down...”

Will thought he’d fairly well convinced himself that, like it or not, Hannibal was real. Alana’s super(natural)-spy bullshit had reinforced this immeasurably. But for Hannibal to not just be real but visible to other people—it felt different. Concrete, undeniable. And a hell of a lot more dangerous.

“I’m Doctor Lecter,” Hannibal continued, holding out his hand to Beverly, “Hannibal Lecter.” Will blinked, neither appellation familiar to him.

“Nice to meet you,” Beverly said, shaking the proffered hand even though Will made a choking noise at the sight, “I’m Beverly Katz.” Hannibal let go of her a second later, and with no apparent ill effect. Will watched her for a second longer to make sure there wasn’t any delayed-action mummification at play, then turned to glare at Hannibal with every ounce of ire he could muster (which was, it must be said, an impressive amount).

Hannibal was, naturally, unaffected. “Perhaps I’d best escort you back to your lodgings, Will,” he said smoothly, laying a hand on his elbow, “You’re looking a bit pale.”

“ _You’re_ …looking…” Will tried to finish off the retort, but adjectives like “handsome” and “delectable” were all his unhelpful brain supplied. Hannibal tilted his head in a unique combination of amusement and sympathy at Will’s distress.

“That’s a good idea,” Beverly interjected, “But could I just steal Will for a moment, first?”

“Of course,” Hannibal nodded graciously and Will rolled his eyes while Beverly dragged him a little ways down the street and out of earshot. Not, of course, that any place in the town or even the country would probably be out of Hannibal’s earshot.

“Are you ok?” she asked him in a serious undertone, “As a rule, I don’t let strange men take my friends back to their hotel rooms unless everyone seems 100% on board with it.”

“That’s a good rule,” Will said bleakly.

Beverly’s eyes narrowed. “Do I need to kick this guy’s ass? Or like, call the cops?”

“No,” Will said quickly, images of dismembered police dancing before his eyes, “That wouldn’t—it’s not…it’s not like that.”

“Then what is it like?” Beverly looked like she wanted to shake him, and honestly, Will wished she would. Maybe it would knock loose some of his sense.

“He, that is, we….it’s…” Will repressed the urge to stamp his foot like a frustrated child when none of his words could stand up to the task of conveying the towering presence in Will’s life that was Hannibal. 

Beverly took pity on him. “Ok, let’s work this out together. So…there was this mummy hallucination business.”

Will nodded.

“Now there’s this random fancy dude.”

Will nodded again.

“And you have…like…transplanted your mummy psychosis onto this hot Lithuanian guy?”

“Yeah, I guess that’s—wait,” Will sputtered. “Did you call him _hot_?”

“Uh, duh. He is, in a silver fox kinda way. Not my type but wow,” she laughed, “Definitely yours. You should have seen the way you looked at him.”

“I didn’t look like I wanted to rip his head off?” Will asked, genuinely surprised. He’d been fairly sure that was his default expression around Hannibal.

“More like you wanted to rip his clothes off.”

“Shit.”

“Don’t worry, he definitely dug it. Was returning the eye-sex, all the way.”

“Oh, _shit_.” Will covered his face with both hands. His ears were burning and he knew, he _knew_ , that Hannibal was listening to all this and laughing his ass off.

“Well, that settles it,” Beverly said, clapping her hands once, “You’re clearly gone on this rando. So, you officially have my stamp of approval. I have reversed my previous anti-mummy-fucking stance, due to new evidence. And the fact that this dude doesn’t have a bandage in sight.”

“No, he probably keeps the bandages under the thousand-dollar overcoat,” Will sighed. Then he had to try not to think about how suddenly curious he was to know what exactly did lie underneath that obnoxiously expensive-looking overcoat. Also, how the hell a mummy bought an overcoat. Or materialized one. Shoplifted it? “Fuck me,” he grumbled, dragging a hand down his face.

“No thanks,” Beverly replied neatly, “Ask your new pal, though. I’m sure he’d be down.”

“Alright, my friendship with you is officially cancelled,” Will declared, “you’re the worst.”

“I think you mispronounced ‘best.’ And besides, I’ve got a strict no-return policy.”

“Guess I’m stuck with you then.”

“You bet.” Beverly punched his shoulder and Will winced. “Go get ‘im, tiger!”

Will groaned internally, then externally, for good measure.

Beverly gave him a companionable shove back in Hannibal’s direction, shooting Hannibal a wave over Will’s shoulder which he returned with good humor.

“You’re not a doctor,” Will grumbled as soon as he was close enough to Hannibal for it to be clear he was talking to him, and not just accusing random passersby of being phony medical personnel.

“Is that not the profession closest to mine? They who do their best to influence the passage between life and death?”

“No, that’s—ugh. God, you’re pretentious and weird.” Will’s exasperation wanted to express itself by burying his head in the crook of Hannibal’s neck, and Will gave it a good mental talking to for encouraging such nonsense. “If you’re a doctor, then…then how many bones are there in the human body?” He pointed triumphantly in Hannibal’s face.

“Approximately two hundred and six,” Hannibal answered promptly, “Depending on how one counts certain formations.”

“Okay, shut up,” Will grumbled, realizing he’d gone far too easy and pulling out his phone. “Okay, what’s…” He started to Google “impossible medical trivia” but Hannibal sighed and took the phone from his hands, tucking it back into his jeans pocket with extreme familiarity.

“Calm yourself, dear Will. Walk with me.”

The last phrase, though gently delivered, was clearly an order. That made Will want to stand rooted to the spot, but his angry tone had already attracted enough attention from passersby, so he decided not to make a scene. Yet.

It was a weekend and the town’s populace was out in force, children and grandparents and friends and couples wandering through the streets despite the gloomy, overcast skies. A small stall had set up shop outside a hardware store, selling breadcrumbs to feed the birds to the delight of the young ones and the despair of those who inevitably had to clean up the animals’ droppings.

Hannibal glided up to the stall and returned with a bag of breadcrumbs of his own.

Will watched as Hannibal began to trail them on the ground, first in a straight line, then turning off sharply into another line, and then another, and finally back in a line parallel to the first, ending up with a familiar shape.

“I did this before,” Hannibal said softly as a pair of birds descended, followed by half a dozen of their brethren and more by the minute, “For Mischa.”

Will watched the crows fill the ground like ink in a well. “M for Mischa,” he murmured, observing the flapping wings and pecking beaks with fascination.

“And now…” Hannibal’s fingers brushed against the outside of Will’s wrist, tracing lightly over the pisiform bone and moving him like the moon to a tide. Will found himself on the other side of the living letter, and Hannibal whispered in his ear, “Now it is a W for Will. Full circle.” Hannibal smiled, a dark descendent of the Sphinx’s grin. “It seems you’ve always been waiting for me. The hidden alternate inside my life.”

“I think you’re reading too much into it,” Will grumbled.

“Why should I ignore meaning when it’s so plentiful?”

Will sighed, too tired to come up with an appropriately cryptic response. “It’s beautiful,” he noted instead, cocking his head to observe the living art more closely. He was fairly certain one of the crows had grown weary of the breadcrumbs and was instead gnawing on the leg of one of its fellows. Will wasn’t surprised. Hannibal’s corruptive nature burned through all the beings in his presence.

“It’s also creepy,” he added. “So, a lot like you.”

“How flattering,” Hannibal chuckled, before nipping at Will’s earlobe.

“For god’s sake—people are watching,” Will hissed, fruitlessly trying to shoo Hannibal away.

“No, they’re not,” Hannibal countered, entirely undeterred.

Will glanced around. Indeed, no one was watching them. Not a single person. He realized, with an icy flutter in his gut, that they probably couldn’t bear to. Something in their souls warned them that to look upon Death would allow him entrance to their hearts, their minds. What did it mean, then, Will wondered, looking Hannibal in the eye with a strange, dizzying sense of homecoming, that I can’t look away from him? Nothing good, surely.

As he had many times before, Hannibal seemed to overhear the thoughts in Will’s head like they were merely fellow diner’s conversation at a nearby restaurant table. “You despise your own skin,” he stated calmly, lovingly. The pads of his fingers pressed into Will’s shoulder; Will could feel the loops and whorls of his fingerprints through the layer of his jacket. “I could peel it off you, so, so gently…” Hannibal’s voice was the lullaby you hear after taking a bullet to the brain. “And I could form you something more suited. Something bespoke to your darkness.”

“Bespoke? I shop at Walmart,” Will replied, automatic.

Hannibal paused, mouth pursing in confusion. The expression was so utterly human that it snapped Will out of his trance. He stumbled back, free of Hannibal’s grasp if not entirely rid of his influence.

Hannibal looked—not disappointed, precisely, because that was too mundane, but perhaps the expression was disappointment’s supernatural cousin.

“Let’s just…let’s just go.” Will started off, hands in pockets, head ducked, shoulders tight. Hannibal followed equably beside him, a strong, upright line contrasting the discomfited curve of Will’s spine.

“Back to that dusty little hovel. Although I admit that you make a compelling visual study when lying in bed, you spend far too much time locked within that room. Some sort of nesting instinct, perhaps?” Hannibal hypothesized.

“It’s safe,” Will said, rather nonsensically considering the events that had occurred within those walls. “I mean, it’s home, for now. Nothing like my place in Virginia, but it’s better than nothing.”

“You seek a homecourt advantage.”

“Something like that. I don’t think I’ll be able to repel the forces of that fucking Institute of Alana’s from the four-poster in the B&B, but at least I’ll be gunned down in comfort.”

Hannibal moved in a way that suggested rolling his eyes, but without stooping so low as to actually do it. “Please, Will, like I’d let you die in such an ignominious fashion. And at anyone’s hand other than my own.”

Will sighed. “We should have these chats more often. I always feel so much better afterwards.”

“Is talking effective?” Hannibal mused, “I feel that linguistic forays have mixed results when aimed in your direction.”

“Depends what’s being foray-ed. And who’s doing the foray-ing.”

Hannibal’s lip curled. “Your decimation of an already ugly language aside, dear Will, I should like to speak about your answer.”

“My answer to what?”

“Whether or not you’ll deign to spend eternity with me.”

“Oh. Is that all?”

“It’s not all,” Hannibal replied breezily, “But it’s the most important topic on our interpersonal agenda. I felt you on the verge of deciding when Dr. Bloom demanded your knowledge regarding my existence, but then you slid away from the precipice of clarity.”

“I’ve been reliably informed that you’re not supposed to go jumping off cliffs. Even semi-metaphorical ones.”

Will pulled up short when he realized they were meandering up the walk to the B&B. Surely, they hadn’t been this close. They’d been nearly a mile away, hadn’t they? But reality warped and pinched to Hannibal’s wants. Or perhaps, Will’s wants. He longed for a cool, dark space. He longed to be alone…no, not precisely alone.

Hannibal followed Will up the stairs, and it was so strange to see the receptionist’s eyes flicker away from Will to peruse Hannibal’s expensively tailored figure.

Will pushed open the door to his room, left unlocked. He briefly imagined the entertaining concept of someone breaking into his room with the intention to rob him, and finding Hannibal. Blood spattered, pooling on the floor of Will’s mind.

“You’re troubled,” Hannibal said, leaning into the obvious.

“I’m a mess,” Will said succinctly. “My mind’s a crime scene, and my logic is struggling to cast an absentee vote in my heart’s place.”

“There are those who say the heart never lies. Preposterous,” Hannibal sniffed. “I’ve never encountered a metaphorical organ more prone to deceit.”

“Is your heart lying to you?” Will asked, interested.

“It is yours that concerns me.”

Will shrugged off his jacket, trying to toss it onto a chair and missing. He stared at it on the floor, like he’d never seen such a fascinating sight. “I haven’t lied to you. Not that I’m against lying to you in principle, it’s just that I don’t know how.”

“That’s what concerns me. I’ve tasted your heart and held truth on my tongue.”

Will was drawn to Hannibal, eye to eye even though that hurt.

His hand reached up, unbidden, to touch. His thumb traced the lines around Hannibal’s mouth, the crinkles by his eye, stretched high over his cheekbones. Ages he’d lived, the life he’d lived and the lives he’d consumed. Will didn’t have the words for what he was feeling, for what he’d experienced since he laid hands on those cursed, obsidian antlers, since he’d locked eyes with the most beautiful and terrible man to ever walk to earth, since he’d been destroyed and remade by the hands of death.

“Perhaps you don’t want me to talk to you,” Hannibal murmured, slithering closer, too close, “Maybe you want me to make it easier. Maybe you want me to make love to you…”

“Uh…” Will wasn’t sure how he’d gotten pressed up against the door but fuck, he sure was now, “That’s…”

“Perhaps that’s why you keep returning to this room. Do you ache to take me to your bed?” Hannibal’s breath was warm against Will’s mouth, he smelled like grass and the river and the church basement where Will had sat alone for hours while his grandfather’s funeral went on above him.

Will gripped Hannibal’s face tightly with both hands, riding a sudden wave of fury-rippled desire. “I want to tear away every layer of you, skin and nerves and muscle and bone and spirit. I want to see if you bleed red. I want to know if you’d scream when I did it.”

Hannibal nodded, as if acknowledging a pleasant fantasy. “Yes. And?”

Will growled, so low in his throat he couldn’t even be sure it was him. If it was his own noise, it was born of something he didn’t recognize, and couldn’t contain.

Will surged forward and kissed Hannibal, their mouths sliding together, sharp incisors catching on skin. Hannibal ravaged his throat, hands in more places than seemed possible. Will pushed and Hannibal went obediently, backing up until his knees hit the bedframe. He fell back, taking Will with him, and Will went so willingly, crawling up Hannibal’s body until he could straddle him comfortably up against the pillows.

Hannibal’s heat was so fierce, so dangerous, Will felt sure it must be connected to the molten center of the earth. It was so unchanging, so steady. So reliable. It might warm you or kill you, but either way, it was true to its nature.

Will’s hand found its way into the front of Hannibal’s shirt, pressing against his chest, uncaring that no true heart beat beneath it. He leaned heavily into Hannibal’s iron strength, let himself feel safe. It was foolish, undoubtably, but so was what he wanted to do. Oh, all the things he wanted to do, with his hands and his mouth, all the things that would seal the connection between them forever…

“I can’t believe I’m considering fucking a mummy,” Will groaned, head falling with a thunk to Hannibal’s shoulder.

“Is such crude terminology really necessary?” Hannibal asked after a confused moment, sounding pained.

“Do you object to ‘fucking’ or ‘mummy’?”

“Both. Though, mummy is mostly just inaccurate—all effects of mummification have long since evaporated from my being.”

“Well, thank god for small miracles,” Will muttered, “Really don’t know what I was going to do if you were still all crusty and dead down…there.”

Hannibal looked mightily wounded as he said, “I assure you, I am not.”

Will groaned and clawed a hand down his face. “I can’t believe I’m doing this,” he just repeated.

“That seems to be a recurring theme with you,” Hannibal noted, idly slipping fingers under the hem of Will’s shirt. “Would you perhaps be more amenable to the situation if you simply accepted its unreality?”

“Uh….what?” Will replied, eloquently.

“Let me rephrase. If this wasn’t real—you, me, tonight—would you feel as bound by doubt and social expectation as you are now?”

“You mean if there were no consequences?”

Hannibal nodded.

Will considered it. “I guess I’d…huh. I don’t know.” That wasn’t true. He did know. If there were no consequences, he’d already be a lot more naked.

Hannibal seemed to sense this train of thought, if the subtle beginnings of a smile gathering around his mouth were any indication. His hands crept forward, slipping gently back around Will’s waist, thumbs rubbing tender circles against his hipbones.

“I…” Will swallowed hard, “I hate you.”

“I think not,” Hannibal replied carelessly, “But you’re welcome to pretend so if it makes you feel better.”

It didn’t, really, but the concept of hating Hannibal felt like the last bastion of reality Will had in reach, and he clung to it. Then again, wasn’t he considering abandoning reality for a night of passion with a creature of the night? Hadn’t he clutched for a monster’s hand when a kind human offered the perfect chance to escape his reign?

“Shall I pretend as well?” Hannibal asked and Will watched light bend around him, as if not daring to touch his form.

“Pretend what?” Will murmured distractedly.

“That I’m human.” Hannibal kissed Will’s eyelids, once, twice. “Would you like me to be mortal for you, Will?”

“Hmm…” With his eyes closed, Hannibal did feel almost human against him. “You already are, in a way, aren’t you? I make you mortal.”

Hannibal bristled. Wind howled against the window, a scream of pain from nature herself. Will looked up, watching Hannibal’s eyes blaze and he laughed.

“I could kill you, if I wanted,” Will continued, breathless and powerful and stupidly unafraid. “I know I could do it. It’s why you need me to need you.”

Hannibal looked like he was going to do something dangerous, so Will beat him to the punch, rolling them until he was underneath Hannibal, his weight pressing Will into the mattress from chest to ankle. Will let his legs fall open in invitation.

Will drank in Hannibal’s hesitation, the stilted roll of his shoulders, the cautiously lifted fingers. Like Will knew something he didn’t. 

“I don’t need anything from you,” Hannibal said, but his confidence wasn’t as watertight as it had been, “I could take what I desire and leave your molecules in the dirt.”

“But you don’t. Because more important than need is _want_. You want me to want you.”

“You do want me, that much is clear,” Hannibal smirked with a roll of his hips, seeking control, “It’s now a matter of quantity and quality.”

“You’re all quantity, it’s your qualities I’m worried about,” Will said. He held on. He didn’t have to win this, he just had to keep it a draw.

Hannibal dragged a hand through Will’s hair then clamped down on the dark curls, just shy of painful. “Do you want me to tell you that I love you?” he asked, curious.

Will scoffed, somewhere in the neighborhood of insulted. “It wouldn’t mean anything.”

“On the contrary,” Hannibal ghosted his lips along Will’s jaw, “It would be true.” 

“True, maybe,” Will conceded, “But on the cosmic scale you operate at, love is peanuts.”

“What then, would be more meaningful for you, if not love or truth?” His mouth explored lower, tonguing along Will’s throat, the dip of his collarbone, “Perhaps you require beauty?”

Hannibal trailed his hand across the bed and then up Will’s arm, flowers exploding in the wake of his fingertips, through the duvet and Will’s skin alike.

For a single, mirror-cracked, gleaming moment, Will saw the beauty. But it couldn’t remain, the soil of his all-to-human mind not meant to harbor such things, and he lashed out in horror at this most extreme violation, feeling the herbaceous roots invade the marrow of his bones in search of sustenance.

The petals were gone from his skin, but Will’s reprieve was short. His eyes traveled only a few inches before finding the blooms again, having taken new root inside Hannibal, crawling along the veins of his forearm, settling snugly in the juncture of his elbow while the more industrious swirled up and around his bicep and over his shoulder. They were such a dark green as to look black, like tar or gasoline stitching its way up, up, up.

“No—” Will couldn’t bear to see them reach Hannibal’s throat, his hand flashing out to crush them before they landed in that most tender, breakable place of breath and blood. For a moment, the petals were tender and velvet-soft under his fingertips, but as soon as the sensation travelled up his nerves, it was followed by the tiny, multifaceted crunch of black ash. The flowers stagnated into volcanic dust on their vines, holding their floral shape for eerie seconds before disintegrating, retreating back into Hannibal’s flesh, leaving only memories in their wake.

Hannibal was incandescent above him. “So beautiful, Will, your fear and love are so beautiful…surely you can see now why I can’t bear to face eternity without you.”

“I can feel myself coming apart at the seams,” Will whispered, feeling like the words weren’t spoken but fallen, dripping through the cracks of his consciousness.

“Of course, dearest. How else would you construct your new self except to tear down the old?”

“Can you make it…make it stop. Stop hurting. Please.” Will’s voice was so soft, he could hardly hear himself.

“I can’t,” Hannibal murmured and Will bit down on a sob. “But you can.”

Will shouted, animal and feral, shoving Hannibal onto his back and climbing on top of him, hands closing around his throat.

He squeezed and squeezed and Hannibal’s breath drained away, but his words remained, “Come with me, follow me, come with me…”

And Will’s grip loosened, just enough to feel Hannibal’s eerie un-life beneath his fingers, to know that he was still there.

Finally, all Will could say was, “Not tonight.”

He let go, kissing Hannibal again and letting his hands roam wherever they wanted, letting Hannibal explore all the planes of his skin that he already knew so intimately, having knit them back together with such care.

Hannibal’s lips roved over his chest, down his stomach, to the V of his hips, pulling aside his clothes and taking Will into his mouth without warning.

Will supposed an oral fixation was to be expected, when dealing with a cannibal, but far less expected was the incredible skill matched only by the tenderness of his touch. Near reverence.

“That’s not going to change my mind,” Will said, the words’ power slightly undercut by the moan that interrupted them. “I’m not—you can’t—I won’t be seduced into your coffin, or whatever.”

“I have other reasons to do this,” Hannibal said, nosing curiously at the juncture of Will’s thigh.

“Yeah, hedonism.” Will sighed, letting his head flop back against the pillows now that he’d successfully distracted Hannibal’s dangerous mouth off of him. Somehow, this did not feel like a victory.

“Is it so unreasonable for one creature to seek connection with another?” Hannibal asked.

“Connection?” Will laughed, the sound so bitter it nearly scalded his throat. “There is no connection with you, only consumption.”

“I thought as you do, once. Not terribly long ago. I think you can imagine what changed my mind. Who…”

“Love softens the monster’s heart?” Will packed sarcasm into each word.

“It was written once that love is the true kingkiller,” Hannibal replied, easy in his sincerity.

“You can’t be killed. Except…” By me, Will didn’t say. It didn’t need saying.

“You see?”

“I see.” He didn’t, not yet. It was foggy, and the concept hurt to touch.

Hannibal clearly knew this, his eyes roaming over Will like he was watching the battle whirling within.

“If you’re not opposed, I’d like to continue.”

“Knock yourself out,” Will said, flapping an uncaring hand. Hannibal did not buy this casual act, and Will could admit he wasn’t really giving his all to the performance.

Hannibal, on the other hand, was quite dedicated. He dragged one calloused hand from around Will’s neck, down his sternum and across his belly, over his definitely-not-uninterested cock and down his leg. Will watched in amazement as his clothes dissolved with little hissing red and orange sparks in the path of Hannibal’s fingers.

“Neat party trick,” he whispered, shivering slightly in the sudden cool air. 

“Living death has its benefits,” Hannibal agreed, and wow. He was. Also naked, now.

Will didn’t have time to look his fill before he was being pressed into the mattress with the deepest kiss of his life.

Hannibal’s mouth left and Will was bereft, until Hannibal said, oh-so-politely, “If you don’t mind…”, before flipping Will onto his stomach and burying his face in the cleft of Will’s ass.

“I—holy _fuck_ —” Whatever protest might have been on Will’s lips died a happy death.

Hannibal’s tongue was hot and wet and very, very determined to wring all sorts of noises from Will that he’d sooner die than admit to making. 

Now, Will Graham was not exactly a connoisseur of dicks, but he’d been around the block. Sampled the menu, as it were. He knew what he liked and didn’t like, for the most part, and had a solid handle on the sexual portion of relationships, if nothing that came before or after it. Or so he thought.

The current situation made all that knowledge seem entirely useless, rather like a vintage ontology of songbirds might be when attempting to build a fusion reactor. Apples and oranges, men and mummies.

He shouted when Hannibal did something delicious and rather improbable under the Earth’s usual laws of physics with his tongue and hoped like hell that these walls were soundproof.

“May I?” Hannibal asked when he came up for air, finger circling Will’s hole in a thoroughly maddening tease.

Will sputtered, “Is this your thing now, asking permission?”

Hannibal had the gall to look offended when Will stole a glance over his shoulder. “Alright, yes, then. Carry the fuck on,” Will said impatiently.

Hannibal did carry the fuck on, rather spectacularly so, if Will was pressed to rate the experience. Except one thing—

“Let me—hey, let me see you,” Will batted at Hannibal’s arm until he pulled out, letting Will shuffle onto his back before pulling Hannibal close, knees up and legs wrapped around him.

“A tyrant already,” Hannibal noted, sounding quite pleased.

Will replied by biting at Hannibal’s jaw, not at all gently.

“You’ve never had this before, have you?” he asked, enjoying the sweet, strange burn of it all. 

“A man?” Hannibal asked, tweaking Will’s nipple.

Will grunted and flicked his eyes upwards with irritation, “No, I’m sure you’ve had plenty of those. And in more ways than one. I meant an equal.”

Hannibal gave a particularly on-the-money thrust, before replying with a disinterested, “You think you’re my equal?”

Will let himself ride out the pleasure for a moment, eyes closing. “I think—I think that’s what you want to make me.”

Hannibal didn’t respond, just picked up speed, and Will suspected he was hoping to fuck those inconvenient deductions out of Will’s head.

That wasn’t going to work, however. Will could feel and he could think with more-or-less complete clarity at the same time, even when there was so very much to feel: Hannibal inside of him and on top of him and sucking bruising kisses everywhere he could reach. The space of his mind expanded the longer he was with Hannibal, and the longer he was with Hannibal, the more the new space filled with thoughts and desires and wishes and questions about him, him, him, him—

“You’re inside me. I surround you. I’ve captured you,” Will gasped, the truth flooding through him, “You’re mine as much as I’m yours.”

“Yes,” Hannibal said, and he was breathless in a way that had nothing to do with the oxygen he’d long since ceased to need. “And without each other, we are alone.”

Will watched Hannibal’s lithe fingers trace through the patterns of sunlight dappling Will’s arm…no, he wasn’t tracing it, he was _trailing_ through it. The golden glow shifted as Hannibal moved inside it, flowing like honey around the tips of his fingers and swirling into new patterns on Will’s skin. Will watched on in fascination, imagining he could feel the light turned liquid sinking slow and warm into his very cells. Or maybe he wasn’t imagining it, maybe Hannibal really was drawing patterns in liquid light, letting it absorb into Will’s body to meet his inner glow.

The movement of his hands coincided with the roll of his hips, and Will felt he was being invaded from all sides. It moved beyond the baseline of frightening that Hannibal always inspired, into the territory of thrilling. Blood-pumping and something else; there was more here at play than biology or instinct.

“I think I do love you,” Will said, hushed, like if no one heard the words they wouldn’t be so awfully true, “if that matters. I do.”

“It matters.” Hannibal kissed him, and it tasted like spring water. “It matters.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The bit with the crows is inspired by a scene in _Hannibal Rising_ with Hanni & Mischa.   
> “the true kingkiller” is a paraphrase from _Arrow_ 6.22.
> 
> so...there was a lot in that chapter! hope you enjoyed it <3  
> tomorrow - the grand finale, and then a shorter epilogue after that...


	6. rebuilt, and erased again

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title is a quote from _Field of Dreams_.  
> Also: Mason’s here. He’s his usual gross self. I felt greasy and immoral writing him, so I thought I should warn y’all to Beware!

Beverly looked unbearably smug when she spotted the two of them leaving Will’s room the next morning.

“Good morning, Doctor,” she nodded formally.

“Good morning, Ms. Katz,” Hannibal replied smoothly.

Will held up a warning finger at her. “Not another word.”

Beverly mimed zipping her mouth shut and throwing away the key.

At the foot of the stairs, Will and Hannibal ran into Price and Zeller before Will could extract any such agreement of silence from them.

“Now, does Will’s hot new squeeze look like a mummy to you, Mr. Zeller?” Price asked, propping his chin up with a fist and scrutinizing Hannibal.

“He does not, Mr. Price,” Zeller agreed. “In fact, if I were to weigh in, the moniker ‘sugar daddy’ would come to mind.” 

Will silently vowed to murder Beverly.

“Pardon me?” Hannibal said, the epitome of politeness.

“It’s just that Will told Beverly—”

“—who couldn’t keep her trap shut—” Will muttered.

“—that you were a mummy. Or a hallucination?” Zeller glanced to Price for suggestions.

“A halluci-mummy?” Price offered, with a thoughtful tap of his finger to his lips.

Hannibal looked entirely too amused by this exchange. Will wanted to die. Then, he quickly retracted that thought, because there was still a significant chance that Hannibal could read Will’s mind, and he might misinterpret the stray existential dread as consent-to-ritual-knifing.

“Well, it was nice to see you guys,” Will said, the ‘not actually’ clear in his tone, “but we’d better be off.”

“Hey, what a coincidence, we’re heading out too,” Price said, so chipper it made Will cringe. The two over-curious scientists stalked Will and Hannibal through the foyer and out towards the street. Will sighed and wheeled around to face them.

“Listen, I’m sure you mean well, but it would be a good idea for you to leave us alone.”

Price and Zeller were used to Will’s lack of company manners, but he wasn’t usually so brazen as to tell them to fuck off to their faces.

“C’mon, Will, we’re just trying to be social,” Zeller gamely attempted to continue.

“Can’t deny us a little curiosity,” Price added, “I mean, it’s not exactly like you to hook-up with strangers, no matter how sexy and European they may be.” He inspected Hannibal with slightly dreamy eyes.

This last left Will boggled, moderately offended, and piercingly jealous. He pointed rather petulantly at Hannibal and declared, “He’s not sexy, and he’s only technically European, I don’t think it counts when you spent the last half-millennium underground. He’s a bastard and he’s dangerous, you shouldn’t be near him.”

Hannibal offered a particularly wolfish grin to Price and Zeller and they flinched back, demonstrating better survival instincts than Will would’ve expected.

“You say the sweetest things, huh,” Price said, voice higher than usual as he watched Hannibal stride away, face tilted up to the sky.

“Listen,” Zeller said, in the tone of one who’s trying to be calm but is feeling anything but, “Beverly told us about the mummy thing, but we thought you were, you know…”

“Joking? Yes, because I’m known for my great sense of humor,” Will deadpanned.

There was a caw and they all turned to see a crow streaking downwards like a great feathery cannon ball before throwing out its wings and landing neatly on the outstretched crook of Hannibal’s arm. Its glossy black feathers were mottled with white and its beak glinted maroon in the sun. It cawed, more sedately this time, and Hannibal seemed to say something in reply.

Price and Zeller watched the display with identical gaping expressions.

“Did…did your hot Lithuanian boyfriend just…uh…” Zeller coughed, “did he just talk to that crow?”

“Yeah,” Will sighed, then frowned. “And he has a name.” Will frowned harder at the defensiveness in his own tone.

“A name would be good, for when he kills you and we have to report him to the police. Or the church,” Price said, now showing a truly remarkable level of insight, in Will’s opinion.

“His name is Hannibal,” Will supplied helpfully, “and when he kills me, don’t bother with the police. He’ll just eat them.”

Zeller and Price were now openly horrified, and Will tried not to delight in it, he really did. But it was difficult.

“I’m afraid we have company on the way, dear Will,” Hannibal called over from where he was casually wringing the crow’s neck, tossing the dark corpse to the cobblestones at his feet.

“What?” Will replied, wondering what sort of company a mummy would be expecting.

A moment later, a dozen all-terrain vehicles, SUVs, and armored cars burst from every corner and bush and sidestreet near the B&B. Ah, of course. The violent kind of company.

Many, many men, of various heights and colors and creeds and yet all seeming to have sprung from the same burly, Neanderthal-esque mold, exploded from the vehicles brandishing a creative assemblage of weapons. Will was pretty sure he spotted a crossbow somewhere in there. Hannibal was looking upon the display like a fond uncle when presented with a child’s crayon rendering of a rainbow.

The men shouted the equivalent of “don’t move!” in a number of languages, though the language of guns-pointed-at-everyone’s-face said that fairly clearly even without speech. Alana appeared behind them in a splash of red, coat flapping in the thick wind.

“Good day, gentlemen,” Hannibal said, manners still in place, “and lady,” he nodded at Alana.

“A good day indeed,” a lazy, overwhelmingly American voice called out from behind Alana. She stepped aside to reveal a man lounging in a wheelchair, giving the strong appearance of smiling, despite the fact that everything below his eyes was a roiling mass of scar tissue. “Bring ‘im in, boys,” he gestured minutely with a hand, and the men sprang forward.

“I do not get paid enough for this,” Price whispered, just as bullets began to fly through the air.

He and Zeller took cover and the men paid them no mind; they weren’t the targets.

The simple, human-made projectiles melted in the air before they hit Hannibal and for a moment, Will thought that he was about to have a front row seat to a Kevlar-coated massacre, courtesy of his favorite mummy. But then the crossbow fired something that shone with liquid metal and the bolt slammed through Hannibal’s chest, leaking blackish-silver goo down the back of his coat as he fell to his knees.

Will jumped forward, reaching out, and he wouldn’t have stopped despite the very real threat of death-by-bullet-to-the-brain except that Hannibal looked up from his prone position and smiled at Will with bloody teeth. Will froze.

“It’s alright, Will,” Alana said, pushing through the line of men as a group of them broke off, tossing a net glimmering with the same silvery substance—mercury, Will realized, just like in the tomb—over Hannibal. Will watched him, his nightmare-gilded monster, get tossed in the back of a van like a sack of fucking potatoes.

“You’re safe now,” Alana pressed on, and Will looked at her with confusion and loss and a hollow space where relief should’ve been. “He’ll be locked up, where he belongs. He won’t be able to hurt you.”

She’s protecting me, Will finally realized, guts churning. She doesn’t understand.

The van carrying Hannibal revved its engine and Will tensed, whole body leaning forward, yearning and furious. He couldn’t be left behind. There was no way he’d be able to get into that fortress on his own measly human means, and leaving Hannibal there on his own wasn’t an option.

“You say that, but nothing can stop him. I’m seen it.” Will didn’t have to work hard to dredge up a haunted look in his eyes. “I won’t believe he’s really been taken care of until I’ve seen it happen.”

“Oh, and it’ll be a sight to see,” drawled the stranger, chair humming as he trundled towards them.

Alana’s spine went rigid, cold fury flashing in her eyes before being tamped down and replaced with placid professionalism. She gestured stiffly between him and Will in introduction, “Will, this is Mason Verger. The president of the Institute—”

“—And her much-adored brother in law.” Mason’s fingers brushed Alana’s thigh as he passed, and Will wanted suddenly and fiercely to bite those fingers off with his teeth. “I was hoping to speak to you, Mr. Graham,” Mason drawled, “My sweet little Alana informed me of your sad, sad state of affairs. A poor tortured soul wrapped around that nasty old mummy’s finger. And hell…” Will marveled at how vividly Mason managed to give the impression of a smirk despite the lack of lips, “I can only imagine where those musty fingers of his have been.” A beat of silence. “I think a thank you for rescuing you from that monster’s vile, blasphemous clutches is in order,” Mason prompted.

“Thanks,” Will managed to spit out, sounding only lightly disgusted. Hopefully Mason would mistake the target of that disgust for Hannibal.

“Oh, you’re very welcome. That’s why we do what we do, after all, the betterment of mankind, yadda yadda…. And of course, for the fun.”

Will had been under the impression that Hannibal’s idea of “fun” was surely the most twisted in all the world. He knew now that he was wrong.

“And obviously you’re coming with us, Mr. Graham. You’re an essential part of this little drama. So, get a move on,” he jerked his chin at Will and Alana, “let’s go put our new fish in the aquarium.”

Alana shot Will an angry glare from under her lashes and he tried to reflect a properly chastened posture. He appreciated the kindness behind her efforts, he just didn’t want it.

The ride back to the Institute was quiet and tense, like the interior of the car was trapped in setting concrete. Will tried to say something to Alana, maybe an apology, maybe an explanation, but she pointed furiously at her ear, then at the hulking SUV in front of them that Mason had been bundled into. Will nodded his comprehension and proceeded not to say anything he wouldn’t want the Institute’s patriarch to overhear. Which was everything, resulting in an utterly silent ride.

He ached for Hannibal.

The security at the Institute was even tighter than before, and instead of being shown into the central dome, Will was left in a cold, windowless anteroom. He paced his echoing confines for a shallow eternity. His hand itched and he couldn’t stop scratching the palm, even after angry red welts crawled to the surface. He wanted blood, he wanted the reminder.

When someone finally came and unlocked the door, it was one of the identical towering guards, who simply grunted, “Move,” and gestured with the barrel of a Beretta like he’d been watching too many gangster movies.

Will smiled, and hoped the smile conveyed the sentiment of ‘the only reason I haven’t crushed your eyeballs in their sockets is because you’re bringing me to Hannibal.’

The dome was awash with activity; scientists and grunts bumping shoulders in their crisscrossing duties. Bodies piled thick between Will and that horrible platform, and he had to wait for his bulky escort to clear a path before he saw it. Before he saw him.

Hannibal was stripped nearly naked and tied down in a complex harness of etched silver chains, his arms strung out behind him and a thick, mean collar dragging his neck nearly to the floor. Brackish blood stained his chest, and plastic tubing ran from a gleaming barrel to both arms, delivering a sluggish stream of silver liquid into his veins.

“What are you doing to him?” Will asked, not bothering to hide the horror in his voice as he pushed forward to where Alana and Mason stood by, monitoring the operation.

“Injecting mercury, direct to the circulatory system,” Mason declared with pride, “or whatever passes for a circulatory system in the old goat. The ancient Egyptians used to line their tombs with the stuff to keep evil spirits at bay. It seems to have had a similarly castrating effect on our guest.”

“It _seems_ to,” Will pointed out, “you can’t underestimate him. You can’t take anything for granted.”

“Oh, don’t worry about that. Between the mercury, the ancient runes in the chains, and enough firepower to make the American military shit their pants, our new acquisition isn’t going anywhere.”

Will begged to differ. The injection set-up in particular wasn’t very secure, there clearly hadn’t been time to make it anything less than slapdash. If he could just stop the flow of mercury, maybe loosen the chains, then…well. Hopefully, Hannibal could do the heavy lifting of escaping, because Will didn’t have much of a plan past getting his hands on something sharp and disconnecting the IV.

Will filled his lungs with a shaky breath and then crawled into the skin of the man before him, allowing Mason’s vile mind to rub against and stick to his own, soaking up the money-infused confidence and sick pleasures of the flesh until he could stand tall, eye to eye.

Mason wasn’t interested in Will, however, creeping closer and closer to Hannibal instead.

Hannibal watched Mason’s approach with a dulled interest, not bothering to strain his immobilized neck to catch sight of his captor. He watched Will’s feet with far more alacrity but returned his attention to Mason when he rolled to a stop just at the edge of the platform.

“Hello, up there,” Hannibal said cheerfully, “I don’t believe we’ve been introduced.”

“Ah, how lax of me,” Mason nearly giggled, “I am Mason Verger, of the slaughterhouse Vergers. I’ll be your warden and torturer for the evening. If you find yourself in need of anything, don’t hesitate to ask our staff.”

Hannibal offered a thin-lipped grin. Mason sipped oxygen from the breathing tube hooked up along the length of the chair, spout near his chin.

“Sorry if I don’t offer a hand to shake. I’ve known your kind, intimately.” Mason cracked his neck and smacked the scarred remains of his lips. “Until a monster from under the bed ate my face, I didn’t care much for my daddy’s side projects, like this Institute. No, not until I came face to face with a freak like you.”

Hannibal’s chilling smile sent frost racing up and down the gleaming chains wrapped so lovingly around his arms, “Oh, Mason, there are no freaks like me.”

Mason’s hungry gaze tracked the frozen swirls, one clawed hand tapping a speeding tempo on his chair’s arm, “On that, we agree. You’re one of a kind.”

“As are you,” Hannibal mused. Mason gummed a smile and Hannibal grew one to match. “Please, don’t mistake that for a compliment. You’re a disgusting little boy, a diseased shrew. Utterly distasteful. Inedible.” Hannibal shook his head as far as the restraints would allow. “Naughty, naughty little Mason. Sticking your grimy hands in all sorts of cookie jars.” Hannibal tutted, “Such behavior should not be abided.”

“Sticks and stones,” Mason drawled, “I’m hardly going to be baited by the likes of you.”

“No, you’re too stupid to realize.”

Mason hacked out a long, rattling sigh. “Realize _what_?”

“That I’m not the one who truly aches to kill you.”

Mason’s eyes flitted about in his head, wanting to spin around and see through the back of his skull. Will didn’t take his gaze off of Hannibal. Alana had never taken hers off of Mason.

“Mr. Verger, we’ve completed the initial examination,” a weedy man with thinning hair sidled up to Mason, holding a strikingly familiar blade, “It’s properties are…remarkable.”

“Wonderful, wonderful,” Mason snatched the knife from the scientist’s grasp. His quick eyes spotted Will’s reaction, the pull-taught muscles in his shoulders.

“Recognize this beauty, do you?” he asked, pressing the cool blade to his own cheek, “Bet this icky, icky man threatened to do terrible things to you with it. We found it on his, uh, person. Well, _in_ his person. Chest cavity, to be precise. We’re very thorough, aren’t we boys?” Mason’s ‘boys,’ AKA the collection of very large, very cruel looking men, nodded in dopey unison.

“Now,” Mason refocused his attention to Will, who shifted uneasily beneath the cold, rodent’s stare, “I don’t put much stock in old wives’ tales, but since it’s all we have to go on here, it’ll have to do. Do you wanna hear a story?”

“No,” Will said immediately, to a cough of laughter from Mason.

“Spunk! Love it. Anyway,” Mason hacked for a moment, downing more purified air from his tube before continuing, “Legend has it that the one who releases the beast is bound to him forever.”

“So I’ve heard,” Will replied laconically.

“But there’s this teensy-weensy little caveat,” Mason continued, now tapping the blade against his thigh, “lost to history until yours truly dug it up.” He paused, hoping the moment would fill with dramatic excitement. For Will, it only filled with nausea. “This other, important little detail,” Mason finally said, “is that the one bound to the beast has the power to kill him. Actually kill him, permanently.”

Will flicked one unimpressed brow upwards. “Fascinating. Why do I care?”

“Now, now, Mr. Graham. You should care a great deal. I know you’re the one who let him loose. Accidentally, of course. And since then you’ve been under the spell of this monster, too scared to come to us for help. Isn’t that right?” He flicked a switch and his chair spun towards Alana. “That’s what you told me, right, honey? Will Graham, innocent, benighted victim.”

He didn’t give Alana a chance to respond, twirling back to Will. “Now, I should think that a man as tortured as you would be jumping at the chance to put this freak into the ground. It’s the proper thing to do after all. The _only_ thing for a real man to do, when his honor’s been so besmirched.”

A muscle ticked in Will’s jaw. He wanted to look at Hannibal, but he could feel his amusement radiating out of the pit, and if Will saw that expression, he’d probably grab the blade from Mason’s hand and ram it straight into Hannibal’s smug face. And that was _not_ the plan.

“Because you weren’t willing, right?” Mason cajoled, twirling the knife like a conductor’s baton, “You would never be complicit in all those _wanton_ acts. We should get you a diagram, you can tell us where the bad man touched you.”

“Mason, I know you struggle to maintain your pretense of humanity,” Alana snarled, stepping between Mason and Will, “but if you could just try a little harder not to be a complete dickhead—”

“Oh!” Mason shivered theatrically, “Dr. Bloom shows her teeth. Too little, too late, I’m afraid, though I applaud the effort. It’s Will’s effort, however, that I’m interested in.” He passed the blade from hand to hand, before spinning it around and offering the hilt to Will. “Whadaya say, you ready to see how the undead die?”

Will jerked forward to take the blade and Mason reared back, pulling it from his reach, laughing hysterically.

“Mason, you can’t be serious," Alana burst out, “we have to study the creature first—

“Study, shmuddy!” Mason shouted, “What’s to learn, when he could burn. And that’s Mister Verger to you, if you’re going to be snotty.”

“We’ve never had a specimen of such age or power under our control before,” Alana said, quick and firm, “Even if you don’t want to think of the scientific achievements, think of the military applications—if he’s capable of half of what he’s rumored to be, the earnings would be astronomical.”

“If he can do half the things he’s rumored to do,” Mason murmured, staring starstruck into Hannibal’s crimson eyes, “then we’d better destroy him quick, before he chows down on all of us.”

“That may be the first intelligent thing I’ve heard you say, little Mason,” Hannibal smiled.

“C’mon, Willy,” Mason nagged, not breaking his gaze with Hannibal in the pit. “Let’s see what color he bleeds.”

“Will, don’t do it,” Alana cut in, standing strong. “We have no idea what will happen. There are utterly unknown forces at work, you could _die_.”

“I guess that’s fair,” Will shrugged, “A life for a life.” Now give me the knife, Will thought, give me the knife you stupid, stupid bastard.

He held out his hand, but Mason passed the knife onto one of his waiting lackeys, who then stepped back to a respectable distance.

“Glad you’re on board, Will. I’m excited to watch the murder, and all that. But first, I’ve just gotta know,” Mason leaned forward, the angle making his eyes seem huge and bulbous, “Did he have to use the old mind-control trick to getcha on your knees, or did you bend over willingly? Oh, yeah,” Mason’s voice went high with glee, “I can smell the slutty ones from a mile away. You know that, don’t you, Alana?”

Alana crossed her arms, voice flat, “Crude insults aside, Will would never—"

Will winced, just a little.

“Come on, Doctor Bloom, he’s got a hickey, for Christ’s sake!” Mason shouted at the top of his lungs, and Will spotted a couple of nearby staff try and take a gander at him, “Anyone with half a brain can figure out that our prisoner got a nice taste of Will, here. Mmm, yummy,” Mason wriggled with delight, “C’mon, honey, spill. Does the hunky mummy taste as good as he looks? I’m dying to know what the world’s oldest people-eater was like in bed.”

“You really wanna know?” Will advanced, channeling Hannibal’s snake-like grace. Slow in the grass. You can’t see me, but you’re still afraid.

“Oh, I really do,” Mason growled, edging forward. His wheels squeaked, his tongue flicked out. “C’mon, you gonna whisper it in my ear?”

Will picked through his memories and slipped on a sultry smile from a black and white film he’d been mesmerized by at two in the morning when he was a child, staying up past his bedtime. He heard the cautious click of Alana’s heels, retreating. Smart woman.

He leaned down, bending until his lips almost brushed Mason’s gnarled cheek as he murmured, “He was fucking _spectacular_.”

Will’s hand flashed out and snapped Mason’s breathing tube in two, bringing the fresh sharp point down hard into Mason’s thigh.

Mason screamed as blood spurted into his face and Will wished he had time to enjoy the view. “You said you were dying to know,” Will shrugged at Mason’s choking body then leapt into the pit, slicing the jagged plastic of the breathing tube through the IV piping with one fluid motion. The mercury gushed across the floor as alarms began to clang throughout the facility and the heat of a dozen heavily armed men descended towards him.

“You’re magnificent,” Hannibal breathed as Will jammed the end of the tube into the lock binding the collar around his neck, breaking it open with sheer desperation and brute force, “Now, cover your ears please.”

Will did as he was told without thinking and was glad he did, because as the first of Mason’s goons managed to grab his shoulder, Hannibal let out a noise that brought every living thing in a mile-radius to its knees. It was like the grotesque lovechild of a scream and an avalanche, crunching bone and inhumanity. The dome cracked, sending thin trails of powdered glass down on their heads as the sound faded, replaced with the moans and gasps and sobs of the Institute’s half-unconscious populace, all huddled and twitching on the ground—or worse, lying very, very still with their eyes open and mouths slack.

Will’s heart was pounding so loudly he could hardly hear himself hissing at Hannibal, “Why the hell didn’t you do that earlier?”

Hannibal didn’t answer, just looked supremely self-satisfied.

“Did you—” Will’s rising fury almost choked him, “Did you _let_ them capture you, you stupid son of bitch?”

“What’s devotion without a proving ground?” Hannibal matched Will’s question with one of his own, stealing a kiss when Will bent to wrestle open his shackles with shaking hands.

Will squirmed aside, grumbling, “There’s a time and a fucking place for that sort of thing.”

“Here and now are doing nicely,” Hannibal murmured in his ear, red eyes flashing over the groaning men and woman strewn about.

There was a strangled gasp and a clatter, and Will spun around to find Alana climbing to her feet, shaking like a newborn foal. She’d been protected from the blast by Mason’s chair, apparently made of damned sturdy stuff. Mason was still alive and relatively alert as well, Will noted with displeasure.

Hannibal made a thoughtful sound as he slipped off his last chain and stood, rolling his neck and stretching out his arms.

He turned to Will, offering one of those deceptively gentle smiles, and took his hand, leading him up and out of the pit.

“Doctor Bloom, such a pleasure that you’re still with us,” he said, watching with amusement as she pulled the gun from beneath her jacket and centered it on his chest. “There’ll be no need for that,” he gestured from Alana to Mason. “I can assure you it’s much more satisfying without the distance necessitated by that sort of weapon.”

Alana blinked away sweat from her eyes, confused. The gun barrel dipped.

“The wound Will inflicted, although serious, is not fatal,” Hannibal pointed out, gesturing to Mason’s ragged thigh regretfully. “That means that the pleasure is still yours for the taking.”

He stepped towards Alana. She tried to back away but her legs wouldn’t respond. The gun wavered.

“A favor.” Hannibal lifted the broken length of hardened plastic like a knight offering a lady his sword, “For protecting my Will, in your own way.”

“Why would you think—”

“Don’t prevaricate, Doctor Bloom, it doesn’t suit you,” Hannibal cut her off, impatient, “I have seen in his mind and yours what he’s done. To you, your wife, to the children she’ll never have.”

“The children are the problem,” Alana snapped, the gun forgotten in her hand, “Without Mason, we have nothing. No male heir.”

“How backwards,” Hannibal sighed, “But not insoluble. You’ll find, in a very unusual Swiss safe registered under Mason’s mother’s maiden name, that he has ensured his line will continue, no matter if his body does. One small vial,” Hannibal clicked his tongue, “You played with your toys too long, Mason.” He took Mason’s hand and began to idly snap off his fingers, one by one, ignoring Mason’s sobs and screams. “A cornered animal will always fight, and surely you know what mothers are like. Even when their children have yet to arrive. This is your last chance,” Hannibal turned back to Alana, letting Mason’s bloody stump smack down to the armrest of his chair.

Alana locked eyes with Hannibal, blue against red. She holstered her gun and held out her palm. “Give it to me.” 

“Alana—” Will didn’t know what he was going to say, but he didn’t bother when he saw the look in her eyes. When he saw what Hannibal had seen. Will took a step back, and gave her a swift, respectful nod.

“You wouldn’t,” Mason gasped for air, coughing up blood as he watched Alana approach, weapon aloft.

“No,” Alana agreed, before driving the razor-sharp rod into Mason’s throat. She hardly blinked in the arterial spray, jamming the makeshift blade in deeper and deeper until it came out the other side. She only let go when Mason’s corpse had stopped twitching.

“It is always a pleasure to see an artist work,” Hannibal commented mildly, “even in the early days of their craft.”

“Alana’s doing this to protect her family,” Will replied under his breath, “She’s not like you. Not like us.”

Hannibal’s shoulders shifted thoughtfully, and his hand glided down Will’s back to settle at his waist. “Perhaps. It will be interesting to see.”

“Thank you,” Alana said, addressing Hannibal out of the corner of her mouth. “For killing him.”

“It’s a death I’m honored to take undue credit for.”

“But you’ll always know, Alana,” Will said, a weight hanging heavy on his heart, “you’ll know the truth.”

“Yes,” Alana smiled thinly, “I’ll always know who was finally able to purge him from this world.”

Hannibal looked absolutely tickled pink. Will wanted nothing more than to crawl into bed and never, ever leave. The residents of the Institute, those who were still alive, that is, were beginning to awaken, and many wished they hadn’t bothered.

“I believe that is, as they say, our cue,” Hannibal stepped neatly over a few variously unconscious and dead bodies to retrieve the red-jeweled blade. He returned to Will, taking his hand and clasping it over the hilt of the knife, entwined with Hannibal’s fingers.

“This has been a pleasant enough diversion,” Hannibal announced, “but it’s time we made our exit.” He raised his free hand and snapped his fingers. In the space of a second, every inch of glass in the great dome burst into sand, sweeping between each molecule of space and taking Will and Hannibal with them on the storm. Will caught a flash of Alana diving for cover out of the corner of his eye and spared half a thought to hope she was alright, for her wife’s sake at least, before he couldn’t see anything that wasn’t the desert made alive.

The sand tore through the wilderness and into the town, joined in strength by hundreds more windows, glass devolved to its most primal form, decimating trees and buildings and people with impunity. It ravaged every inch of land and sky before settling suddenly, gently downwards, like the remnants of a golden rainfall.

Will and Hannibal were left, untouched, once again in Will’s room. There was the strangest feeling that they’d never left, but the blood on Will’s hands, the mercury splashed in gleaming rivulets along his legs, told him otherwise.

“You’ve made your choice,” Hannibal said, expectant and proud. “I thought this would be as appropriate a venue as any for it to be done. I’d have brought you to your home in America, but even my powers have their limits. This will have to continue as your temporary raft in the turbulent sea.”

Will blinked up at Hannibal. I’m still human, he wanted to say, I don’t understand. Not yet.

“You’ll understand,” Hannibal murmured, caressing Will’s cheek and digging sharp nails into his tender thoughts, the soft meat of his brain. “Once you’ve joined me.”

“No…” Will’s spine turned liquid, and an all-too-human fear consumed him. He couldn’t see anything except the blade in Hannibal’s hand and Hannibal’s bright teeth.

“It’s what you want, Will.”

“Shut up. Shut up, you don’t know what I want.” Will shoved at Hannibal’s chest and Hannibal didn’t stop him, but Will couldn’t escape the well of his gravity.

“Give in...” Hannibal soothed, “You have made your choice and you are my chosen. My love.”

“Love?”

“A very human term, but you’ve made me feel something indubitably, abominably human. It only seems appropriate to call it by its name.”

Will licked dry lips, clawed at words. “I thought…I thought we’d agreed that love was a cosmic goose egg.”

“On a cosmic scale, nothing is everything,” Hannibal countered.

“Jesus, you sound like a philosophy major. And I mean that in the most insulting way possible.”

Hannibal ignored him. “In my experience—which I think we can agree is fairly considerable—love is a story we tell ourselves. What story do you tell yourself, Will?”

“No idea.” Will had never been sure what role he played, resigned to be an under-study in his own life. “But whatever story it is, you’re writing yourself into it. Erasing the other characters.”

“What others matter?”

Hannibal’s attractive force was unreal, a north pole against Will’s compass.

“People,” Will said, because surely those should matter. He’d been told they mattered. “People, humans, my colleagues and friends.”

“Friends?” Hannibal repeated doubtfully.

“Yes, my friends. They were—they _are_ my friends, even if…even if they don’t feel as real as you. What happens to them when I’m gone?”

Hannibal pursed his lips, like Will was disappointing him. “They’ll live out their little insect lives, dying beneath the wheels of drunk drivers and at the mercy of heart disease. You’ll forget them. You’ve been forgetting them your whole life. The future must murder the past in order to exist.”

“Even time kills,” Will mused, dazed, holding onto Hannibal to keep afloat.

“Especially, time kills.”

“You know, I understand why they always get your eyes wrong,” Will murmured, exploring those ruby depths, “They’re so red, but in the scientific sense, they act like the truest black. The very definition of the color—absorbing all wavelengths of light. That’s what you do, isn’t it? Absorb all the light around you to fuel your own…radiance.”

“You think me radiant?” Hannibal said, the shadow of a smirk dancing on his lips.

“I know you are. That doesn’t mean I like it.”

“You prefer the dark,” Hannibal concluded.

“Always have.”

“Then why do you resist? Letting me absorb your light.”

Will closed his eyes, trying to imagine it. “If you absorb my light, then what ‘me’ is left?”

“I don’t know. Aren’t you curious to find out?”

Hannibal held the dagger loosely, so casually, like Will’s life wasn’t crashing to an end, here and now.

“No. You’re not making me do this.” Will’s hand covered Hannibal’s and the blood jewel in the hilt burned through Hannibal’s skin with a flame of acrid smoke. Hannibal let go with a grunt of shock and pain, and Will caught the blade by the sharp end, feeling and yet not feeling it as the tempered metal sliced deep in his palm. “You’re in my head, but I’m there too, and I’m holding my own. _I’m_ doing this.”

Will gripped the knife’s handle with both hands and plunged the blade home, curving it up beneath his ribcage and into his own heart.

Horror shaped like delight washed over Hannibal’s face, creasing his brow and smoothing it as Will fell to his knees. Hannibal followed with a delay, hands hovering over Will like he wasn’t sure his fingers would be allowed to land.

Blood gushed and spots danced in Will’s eyes, obscuring his vision. He hoped he wouldn’t disappear, because then he’d never see Hannibal again, and what out there could be worth seeing without Hannibal?

The darkness didn’t last. Diamond refracted light pierced him, stitching his wound and spitting the blade onto the carpet where it lay dull and useless, its duty done.

His eyes had never shut, but they saw so much more now, it was like they’d never truly been open. He’d muddled through this world wrapped in a suffocating, protective membrane of reality, but now everything was present, raw against the essence of his self.

“I’m…” Will tried out his voice, having to feel around inside for a moment before he could locate it, “I’m...still me.”

“Of course,” Hannibal said, matter of fact, “Who else would you be?”

The depth of feeling pressing against and in and out of him nearly made Will cry out, but he realized before a scream could claw its way free that it didn’t hurt. Nothing did, not anymore, even though everything else felt like so _much_ more. Empathy dialed up to eleven. Could he live like this?

Hannibal’s hand dipped down, curling around his jaw, thumb brushing over his lips, tracing their shape like brushstrokes in a beloved painting.

“You said….you said I wouldn’t hurt anymore,” Will gasped, desperate.

“I said pain would be under your domain,” Hannibal corrected him gently, gathering him to his chest. “The intensity of your feeling, of all feeling, like a muzzled dog. Don’t worry, it cannot free itself. You can direct it.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“Believe yourself.”

His hand pressed against Hannibal’s breast, but it didn’t move beneath his palm. No heartbeat. Why bother, after all, now that they were both dead. Time for the last illusion to die with them.

“Do you see?” Hannibal whispered, the words crawling into Will’s ear, marching through his mind. “Do you see?”

Will felt the last flicker of humanity whipping against his heart, caught like a scrap of plastic over a broken window. Beneath it, red meat turned black. No longer lit by a frenzied wood fire forever on the verge of burning itself out, but a freezing coal blaze, hard and eternal and polluting everything around it.

“I see,” he breathed. His last breath. “We’re not dead.” He looked at Hannibal, and he was so much more, even more than before, and Will had always struggled to fathom the whole of his impossible being.

Hannibal stroked his cheek, the trail of his finger cold fire on Will’s skin, his cadaverous nerves firing up a storm, “We’re the only ones who are truly alive.”

“You’re the same, too,” Will snatched up Hannibal’s meandering hand, bringing his fingers to his lips to taste, “I was afraid you’d be changed, from what I knew before.”

“Of course, I am the same. You saw me, completely, from the beginning.”

“And I still love you.”

“And I you. That cannot be changed. Not ever.”

“A universal constant. We will inscribe our law over the earth.” Will smiled, and it was so easy to do that now. “I hope someone tries to stop us.”

Will stood, legs lifting him easily because they were extraneous now. He was so much more than blood and bone. He held a hand out to Hannibal, pulling him effortlessly up to stand beside him.

“We go now, into the long winter,” Hannibal said, a promise and a warning.

Will kissed him, because he could and because he wanted to, either of those things being reason enough to do anything now. He whispered against Hannibal’s lips, an ancient mirror to his own newborn magnificence, “And we are neither of us alone, or lonely.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Those last two lines of dialogue are inspired by the end of _Hannibal Rising_.


	7. epilogue: unwept, unhonored, and unsung

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title from Sir Walter Scott’s “Breathes there the man?”

_Paris, six months later_

“That one.” Will raised a hand and pointed without hesitation at a soft, sun-kissed middle-aged woman. Her straw hat fluttered in the breeze, purse swinging gaily at her side as she smiled down towards the pavement like it had just paid her a compliment. The tip of his index finger followed her progress until she disappeared around a corner.

“Why?” Hannibal asked, thrilling to hear the answer. That part was almost better than what came after.

“She has so much to live for. Children. Young, and happy. Husband who knows how lucky he is and makes sure she knows how he feels. Like she hung the stars in the sky. She hung stars in her daughter’s bedroom yesterday, little silver ones made of tinfoil. Her boy was jealous of his sister, so she went to the store for more supplies, so he can have constellations to match. They’re going to make stars, together. She bought ice cream, too, so it will feel like a special day. She makes every day special.”

Hannibal nodded, enraptured. “And when will it happen?”

Will stood, laying down a pair of euros to pay for their coffee, which went undrunk. “In sight of her home. Her eyes on their door, the door she painted red last summer because she saw that in a movie and fell in love with the idea.”

Will set off briskly down the sidewalk, Hannibal following. They stalked the woman’s path, before cutting into a darkened alleyway. They stepped over broken beer bottles, discarded cigarettes, and the corpse of a rat before bursting back into the sunlight on the other end. Hannibal spotted a red door shining in the afternoon light. Will didn’t bother looking at it, he knew it was there. He walked another block down the street, speeding up his pace when the woman in the straw hat reappeared around the corner. Will stepped off the sidewalk, swerving around parked cars as he headed for the intersection.

Hannibal didn’t follow, casting an inspective glance over the house fronts beside him. A pastel blue townhouse glowed coolly with its absence of life, and Hannibal stepped up to it. He twisted the door handle until the lock cried out in surrender and swung open. A cursory glance around the clean, orderly living room told him all he needed to know. Yes, this would do just fine.

He returned to the street just in time to see Will catch up to the woman. She stepped off the curb onto the crosswalk, heels clicking as she stepped precisely, one-two-one-two along the painted stripes. A squealing noise, and a silver sedan pumped its brakes, far too late.

Hannibal watched as death took hold of the woman and pulled her out of the way of the careening vehicle just in time. He pulled his lower lip into his mouth and sucked, eyes sparkling as he watched Will smooth calming hands down the woman’s arms. She was rattled. She didn’t know she was dead yet.

Hannibal stepped back inside, going to rearrange the throw pillows on the couch into a more pleasing pattern while Will led her to him. After a few minutes of waiting, he heard their footsteps cross the threshold.

He turned when her perfume hit him, floral and infused with kindness and just enough money to get by because they were comfortable weren’t they, they didn’t need fancy things. In Will’s presence, Hannibal knew all this and more.

The woman was beginning to know, now, her mind cresting over the knowledge and crumbling with the weight.

“I want to leave,” she said.

“I know,” Will replied.

She didn’t move. Hannibal settled on the couch, watching her violet nails claw the fabric of the leather armchair she’d fallen into. It scratched the material, and Hannibal twitched at the intrusion. 

“Who are you?” she asked Hannibal. Her voice shook so badly, the words could hardly escape her throat.

“The lesser of two evils.” Hannibal tilted his head, reptilian and patient. He could only imagine her terror; he had never possessed the humanity necessary to experience it. He wished sometimes that he could feel what they felt, the supreme connection with his other half that he’d never know. “You have already met the greater.” 

Hannibal gazed up at Will, filled with adoration even his vast imagination had never conceived could survive his hostile interior world.

“You can be afraid if you want, but it won’t help,” Will told her. The compassion in his voice was terrible beyond measure.

“I am very afraid,” she said, and these were her last words. Scraps of her clothes would be found days later under the Pont de la Concorde, floating atop the river Seine. Her family still holds out hope that she will return someday, somehow.

Her flesh was tender and her screams were sweet, unheard by any living thing, but two unliving ones.

The world knew fear, and two creatures knew peace.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> That’s all for now, folks!  
> I hope you enjoyed this story <3  
> If you’ve got a moment to leave a comment, I’d love to know what you thought!

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [the true kingkiller [podfic]](https://archiveofourown.org/works/24219730) by [ORiley42](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ORiley42/pseuds/ORiley42)




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